The Least Thing

Against Platini: Why Goal Line Technology Makes Good Sense

2012-02-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

The picture above is of course from last weekend's match between AC Milan and Juventus in which the ~~goal~~ ball pictured above was ruled incorrectly by the linesman to have not crossed the goal line, in the process overruling the referee. Such controversial non-goals have led many to call for the introduction of some form of goal line technology which would assist officials in determining unequivocally whether or not a goal has been scored. Remarkably, some object to the introduction of goal line technology.

The most prominent advocate against such technology is Michel Platini, president of UEFA and heir apparent to FIFA. Last year he explained that such technology was not necessary because missed calls were oh so rare:

"How often do you have an incident where there is a real doubt as to whether the ball crossed the line? Perhaps once every 40 years."

Platini said that once goal line technology had been accepted, then videos could be used to make other difficult decisions.

"I'm afraid that if you start with technology which is used once every 40 years, it could lead to other uses for the technology and I'm afraid that maybe this could lead to video refereeing," he said.

"I don't think this technology is really good for football."

Perhaps he had in mind the 1966 and 2010 World Cups during which England found itself on different sides of goal controversies in matches against Germany, with a questionable goal awarded in 1966 and a clear goal denied in 2010. Although England's two experiences with the goal line were many decades apart, recent experience shows that such controversies are fairly common in top flight football.

Last Saturday's phantom goal at the San Siro was not even the only missed goal that day. Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim saw the exact same situation occur with an obvious goal by Hoffenheim not given (below). Hoffenheim prevailed in the end so the sense of injustice was much more muted than the draw in Milan. And earlier this month an A-League game saw yet another apparent goal not given.

Later this week the International Football Association Board -- the international body responsible for the rules of the game -- will discuss the initial results of trials with goal line technology with a decision set to be made in July, 2012.

That goal line technology is in any way controversial is remarkable. Platini's arguments seem to rest on three legs. First, that such controversies are rare. Second, that the introduction of technology for one aspect of the game would represent a slippery slope. And third, the game should be played in the same manner at all levels. Let's consider these arguments one at a time.

First, Platini has backed off from his earlier claims that such events occur every forty years, stating earlier this week after the Milan-Juventus controversy: "A goal like that of the English at the 2010 World Cup against Germany, which was wrongly not given, happens only once every few years." He is still wrong. The three controversies in February, 2012 alone clearly show that goal line ambiguity is problematic for officials. So this argument can be dismissed.

Second, Platini worries that goal line technology will lead to the use of technology in other areas of refereeing: "When I introduce a camera to keep the goals under surveillance I also need one for the surveillance of offside. There are 10 offsides per game." Here Platini's argument fails a basic test of logic. There is no reason why introducing technology to monitor one aspect of the game means that it would have to be introduced in other areas -- the IFAB would still make decisions on changes to officiating a case by case basis. Consider that the addition of additional officials on the goal lines for Champions League matches has not led to a slippery slope of ever more referees being added on the pitch -- there has been no slippery slope. On this issue, Platini was a strong advocate for changing the rules and his opposition to goal line technology demonstrates a marked inconsistency with his previous advocacy of changing the rules to help officials.

Third, the idea that the game should be played in the same manner at all levels is romantic and quaint, but is simply not how things are done. Consider that referees now routinely use communication systems (pictured sticking out of Howard Webb's ear to the left), in place since 2003. This technology is not available at all levels and its implemented has been seamlessly into top level matches with essentially no complaints. Of course, referee communications systems are but one of many examples of how the top level game is different than as played elsewhere (e.g., consider the extra referees discussed above.) Platini's argument is easily shown to be empirically incorrect.

To sum, the game would benefit from goal line technology, which actually is a minor innovation compared to the technologies that have been deployed to assist referees in sports such as tennis, American football, basketball, rugby and hockey. For soccer, where goals matter immensely, the implementation of goal line technology is a matter of improving the performance of the officials with no arguments that I can see against it that make much sense.

Call for Papers on Sport Governance EASM 2012

2012-02-27T05:57:00.000-08:00

At the 2012 meeting of the European Association for Sport Management (EASM) to be held in Aalborg, Denmark in September, Jean-Loup Chappelet, Tracy Taylor and I are convening a workshop on the governance of international and national sport organizations. You can see all of the details below. Paper abstracts for the workshop are due March 26th, and we are looking to accept 9-12 papers, the best of which will be assembling in a special journal issue.

We welcome high-quality papers from academics, journalists, practitioners and others -- the submission portal is here. Our contact information is below if you have any questions.

Governance of international and national sport organisations

Background: Governance has become an increasingly important theme for international and national sport in recent decades because of actual and perceived problems of corruption, lack of transparency and unaccountability within the ranks of many international and national sport bodies. In the last ten years, scholars (Foster, Henry, Katwala…), sport organisations (such as IOC, FIFA, UCI, Dutch NOC…), and some governmental and intergovernmental organisations such as the Council of Europe and the UK parliament have proposed guidelines for improved governance of this growing sector. We propose a workshop on the governance of international and national sports organisations.

Theme: The workshop papers will focus on sub-themes such as:
Evaluations of individual sport organisation governance (IOC, FIFA, national sport organisations, etc.): Present and future
Relationships between local, national and supranational sport organisations: how much autonomy? How much oversight?
Comparison of existing sport governance frameworks: Towards minimum requirements?
Comparison of governance regimes of other non-governmental organisations beyond sport
Role of intergovernmental organisations at European and/or world level
Monitoring of sport governance at national or international level: Need for a Global Governance index?

Keywords: Governance, sport autonomy, transparency, organisational democracy, accountability

Format: Each participant will present their research with Power Point or in a short paper and time will be made available for questions and discussion. The Power Point presentation or short paper should be sent to the session conveners at least two weeks before the conference.

Abstracts are to be submitted for the EASM conference according to the procedure outlined by the scientific committee. Please indicate that the paper is for consideration for inclusion in the Governance of international sport workshop.

Between 9-12 papers will be accepted and form the basis for a one day (three or four session) workshop. Each paper will be presented, commented and discussed within a time frame of 30 minutes at the workshop. The best papers may be published in an edited book or in a special issue of a sport science or international politics journal (ESMQ, IJSPP, Sport in Society, SMJ…).

Conveners: From 3 continents:

Jean-Loup Chappelet, professor of public management at the Swiss graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Jean-Loup has published extensively on governance in the Olympic System, Jean-Loup.Chappelet@idheap.unil.ch

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. Roger is an expert of football governance at national and international level, rpielkejr@gmail.com

Tracy Taylor, professor of sport management at UTS Business, the business school of the University Technology Sydney, Australia, with a particular focus on human resource management and executive leadership development. Tracy is the Editor of Sport Management Review, Tracy.Taylor@uts.edu.au

How "Ball Possession" is Measured in Football

2012-02-25T17:17:00.001-08:00

When you are watching a football match every once in a while you'll see flashed up on the screen a statistic showing how much "ball possession" each team has had. Opta explains how this statistic is computed:

[T]here are several data providers out there in the UK and across the world monitoring games, from TV companies themselves for live games, to specialists like Opta.

Each has their own method of working out possession. Some use calculations based on the data, but most use a “chess clock” approach where each team has a button which is hit when they are in possession. Some do this in the broadcast truck, others have analysts who call it out and inputters who hit the buttons.

Opta used this method originally, but the problem we found with a chess clock approach for time is that you are reliant on the person logging the data remembering to hit the button and the person doing it usually has other tasks to perform and other data to log.

Missing a couple of switches obviously skews the possession figures and it’s impossible to go back and change it. It may not sound much but one minute where the clock is wrong can affect the possession figures by two to three percentage points.

Opta now record possession in a football match by means of an automated calculation based on the number of passes that a team has in a game. We have two analysts, each monitoring one of the teams and they log each event in a game, totalling between 1600 and 2000 events per match.

Each of these events has a timecode plus an xy co-ordinate and the collection system is rigorously monitored by our team of checkers.

During the game, the passes for each team are totalled up and then each team’s total is divided by the game total to produce a percentage figure which shows the percentage of the game that each team has accrued in possession of the ball.

For Opta "ball possession" means percentage of completed passes, and is not a measure of time, though Opta does claim that the two are very closely related.

Rules for Referee-Spectator Interactions

2012-02-24T14:16:00.001-08:00

The video above from last Saturday's NC State-UNC basketball game shows referee Mark Hess tossing out two spectators who happened to be former NC State stars players Tom Guliotta and Chris Corchiani. The ejections prompted a host of reactions including this from NC State head coachMark Gottfried:

"I'm disappointed quite frankly in the ACC because not only did he throw out two of North Carolina State's greats, he threw out two of the ACC's greats," Gottfried said. "The league is supporting an official rather than supporting former great players. The former great players, in my opinion, were embarrassed and wronged when they shouldn't have been. I don't think you can have rabbit ears like that if you're a referee and start throwing people out. I was disappointed in the whole thing."

The Atlantic Coast Conference has backed the referee, but issued a reprimand for not following procedure: he had a police officer escort the two fans off the court rather than officials from the home team.

The incident raises the broader question of referee-spectator interactions. We are generally accustomed to thinking of referees as responsible for governance of action on the court. But the reality is that most big-time sporting events, not just frenzied college basketball games, see interactions between spectators and referees. Most of the time this interaction comes in the form of abuse hurled at the referee from spectators. On a football field (US, soccer, rugby or Aussie) the officials are at a healthy distance from fans, but do have to deal with the occasional pitch invasion, object launched onto the field or even racial or other forms of abuse.

Being a referee is a difficult job. Here is how one referee describes the role in an essay about the NC State controversy:

Let there be no confusion: it takes an absolutely supreme amount of confidence to do the jobs that high-D1 basketball officials do. Imagine what it would be like to talk to Coach K or Roy Williams one-on-one about basketball. Now imagine the mental and emotional toughness it would take for you to stand your ground with either of those two men when he says you’re wrong about something. Now imagine he’s not just saying you’re wrong, but that he’s yelling it. At you. Along with nine- or twenty-one thousand of his best friends. Now turn around (he’s still yelling at you) and go make split-second decisions about the movements of elite athletes trying to pummel each other. And make those decisions accurately.

You have to be arrogant as hell to even try.

No doubt there are guidelines in each relevant sport that govern referee-spectator interactions, but as demonstrated in the case of NC State, these guidelines are rather imprecise and rarely invoked, hence the wide range of opinions on the appropriateness of the referee's action in this case. The referee explained his decision as follows:

They were ejected for excessive demonstration on several calls as they came right up to the scorer’s table. The policeman at the end of the FSU bench was warned that their continual excessive demonstration that incited the crowd would result in ejection.

The same basketball referee quoted above provides a cogent explanation for the factors that a referee must consider in making a judgment about fan behavior:

As most university ticket managers will tell you, not all fans are created equal. At least, not all seat-privileges are. For example, there are different standards of decorum for those seated behind the home bench versus those in the student section. It’s also not uncommon for schools to have a couple of rows of seats reserved behind the visitors’ section. The conventional practice is that people who acquire those tickets are told in no uncertain terms that their primary responsibility is to provide a buffer between the visiting fans and the more spirited of home fans. These ticket holders are typically given strict instructions that they are not to negatively engage, much less taunt the visiting fans, even in the slightest. The enforcement mechanism tends to be that if the ticket office learns that a fan in that section hasn’t lived up to the standard, the violator loses eligibility for those tickets in the future.

Schools aren’t required to do that kind of thing (though I expect that virtually all do), but it’s just plain common sense from a PR standpoint. Along the same lines, any school that fails to set standards and expectations for those holding tickets directly behind its scorer’s table is asking for trouble. Fans seated there should be informed (and in most cases probably are) that clear channels of communication simply must be maintained between the officials and the staff at the table, and that sitting in that area implies a sharing of the responsibility to insure that part of the game. Does that mean people in the front row shouldn’t be allowed to cheer? That those spectators shouldn’t be able to make any noise at all for fear of distracting a scorer or referee? That they should never be allowed to loudly criticize a referee or a call? Of course not. But it must be acknowledged that fans sitting in that area are capable of impacting the administration of a game in ways that fans anywhere else in the arena simply are not. As such, when it comes to fan conduct no one should be surprised that the definitions of “extreme” and “excessive” (the most important words in the relevant part of Rule 10) aren’t necessarily the same for everyone for every fan in the gym.

Referee-spectator interactions provide a fine example of where the governance in the game overlaps with the governance of the game. In the case of Mark Hess, he now has become part of the story and a personality in the game, which for both referees and for sport, is an outcome surely to be avoided.

Mark Pieth on What Happens Next

2012-02-23T07:41:00.002-08:00

Last week the Guardian reported some comments by Mark Pieth as to what should be expected from the FIFA good governance committee, whose initial results are now expected in April. Here is an excerpt:

The committee overseeing reform at Fifa will decide in April whether it will conduct an investigation into the widespread allegations of past corruption at the highest levels of world football's governing body. Mark Pieth, appointed by Fifa to chair the new independent governance committee, said it would examine how Fifa responds to his committee's reform recommendations when the organisation's decision-making executive committee next meets, in Zurich on 29 and 30 March.

"We will decide then, after that meeting at the end of March, whether there should be an investigation into the more serious allegations of the past," Pieth told the Guardian. "We want to see Fifa's responses to our recommendations for future reform and other issues, including how seriously they deal with allegations themselves. If we are not satisfied with the response, all options are open to us, including setting up a commission with specialist investigators."

Pieth's turnabout on the issue of whether the past matters is in line with recommendations made by Transparency International and also a set of journalists who protested the scope of the committee's investigation.

But here is the fundamental problem with his approach: The FIFA committee only has standing because it is a body of FIFA. If FIFA decides to shut it down after the initial report, then there is no recourse. There is no other body with formal standing in a position to investigate FIFA (aside from the Swiss legal system under which FIFA is incorporated). Thus, all of Pieth's leverage exists right now, while he is the chair of the committee. He should recognize that while he may say in public that "all actions are open to us" at the same time all options are open to FIFA as well, and in this instance FIFA holds the trump card.

Kicking the can down the road on whether or not to investigate FIFA's past has a predictable outcome. Let's see what happens in April.

Thirty Two Years Ago Today

2012-02-22T06:30:00.001-08:00

Wonky Definitions of Governance of and in Sport

2012-02-21T10:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a conceptual distinction that I find quite useful, drawing on some wonkish literature of the policy sciences.

The governance of sport refers to decisions that are made at the constitutive level, specifically (from p. 205 in Lasswell and McDougal 1991) :

[C]onstitutive decisions ... establish and maintain the community's most comprehensive process of authoritative decision. These are the decisions, it may be recalled, that establish and characterize authoritative decision makers, state and specify basic community policies, establish appropriate institutional structures, allocate bases of power to the different institutional structures, authorize procedures for the making of different types of decision, and secure the performance of all the different types of decisions necessary to clarifying and securing common interest and effectuating community policy.

In contrast, governance in sport refers to decisions that are made within the constitutive frameworks, and can be simply thought of as decisions related to what happens on the pitch, court, ice, etc.

Most attention is paid to the governance in sport, understandably -- Should Torres be included on the Euro 2012? Who should manage England? Is a 4-4-2 preferable to a 3-5-1-1? These are decisions that involve the implementation of sport. However, the implementation of sport is only possible because of the larger constitutive processes. Every sports fan cares deeply about governance in sport, but what they may not know is the critical importance which sport depends upon effective mechanisms of governance of sport.

Why are College Football Games on Saturdays?

2012-02-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

Why are college football games played on Saturdays, and NFL games on Sundays? Why, politics and money, of course. Specifically, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (SBA) created an anti-trust exemption for professional football broadcasting, which lifted the exemption on Friday evenings and Saturdays.

From the Tulane Sports Law Blog:

While section 1291 of the SBA exempts the NFL and other professional leagues from antitrust attack when pooling their broadcast rights, section 1293 takes away that protection in certain circumstances.vi Section 1293 was designed to protect college football gate receipts from the potentially devastating effects of competing for crowds against televised professional football games.

The SBA prevents NFL broadcasts from competing with college football attendance by removing the antitrust exemption granted in section 1291 when the NFL broadcasts games at times when college games are typically played. If the NFL and its broadcast partners were to televise any of the games sold in the pooled packages during the prohibited time frame, they would risk treble damages in the event those pooled packages are held to be in violation of antitrust laws.

Specifically, the antitrust exemption granted in section 1291 does not apply to any professional football game televised (1) between the hours of 6 pm Friday and 12 am Sunday, (2) beginning on the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December.

The first Saturday game played by the NFL for the 2011 season is on December 17th. It is the third Saturday in December.

Thus, while not a direct prohibition, the risk of treble damages is more than enough to keep the NFL at bay-not to mention that in today's marketplace it would not make much business sense to try and compete with college football broadcasts. After all, over the last 50 years, the football fan has become accustomed to watching college games on Saturday and professional games on Sunday.

College football is far, far from an amateur sport conducted among self-organized clubs and associations. It is big business with Congressional protection.

Rare Footage of Original Hoosiers Released

2012-02-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

Yahoo Sports reports on newly released footage of the 1954 Indiana state high school championship basketball game that inspired the movie Hoosiers:

Of all the great movies involving American sports, few are more ingrained in the nation's culture psyche than 'Hoosiers'. The film gave Indiana high school basketball a national profile, it romanticized how tournament basketball can lionize the little guy and set the stage for much of the popular mythology that engulfs America each March during the NCAA Tournament.

Now, rarely seen footage of the final minutes of the famous game that inspired the movie has been put online, thanks to the Indiana High School Athletic Association. As first brought to Prep Rally's attention by Jeff Eisenberg of our fabulous brotherly college basketball blog, The Dagger, the final three minutes of the 1954 state title game between Muncie (Ind.) Central High and Milan (Ind.) High was re-released by the IHSA over the past week, showing us just what Bobby Plump (or Jimmy Chitwood in 'Hoosiers' parlance) and his teammates looked like while pulling off one of the most famous upsets in American sports history.

There's no code to bring the video on to sites outside the IHSAA portal, but you can see the entire closing sequence right here.

Yahho reminds us that Milan High School, which won the game, had only 162 students, while Muncie had 10 times that many. Below is A. O Scott's NYT review of the movie:

FC Sion's (Legal) Losing Streak Continues

2012-02-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

FC Sion has hit upon a run of bad form on the jurisprudential pitches of Europe. Here is a round-up

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has published its reasoning for its decision in favor of UEFA and in which it asserts its jurisdiction over the dispute (here in PDF). The reasoning is important as it lays out an argument for the delineation of the relationship of Lex Sportiva and national legislation.
The European Club Association subsequently suspended FC Sion for their refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the CAS.
Swiss Civil court has ruled against FC Sion's claim that CAS lacks jurisdiction over the dispute, accepting the CAS claim to being the proper venue to resolve the dispute.
In another Swiss court FC Sion failed to win a judgment that would have restored the 36 points that the team was docked by the Swiss Federation at the request of FIFA.

For is part, FC Sion asserts that they will press (at least some of) these issues via appeal in higher judicial settings.

FC Sion is rapidly seeing its legal options winnowed and the further it pushes its various cases up the judicial hierarchy the more authoritative and lasting will be the resulting decisions. For now, it looks pretty conclusive that the various FC Sion challenges to the authority of Lex Sportiva will have the effect of strengthening and delineating sports governance mechanisms in relation to national and European laws. They might not see it this way, but the European associations will have FC Sion to thank should the challenges to Lex Sportiva help to strengthen their mechanisms of governance.

Open Books for You, Open Books for Me?

2012-02-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

Explosive and troubling allegations out of Trinidad & Tobago:

Funds donated for earthquake-hit Haiti that never made it to the Caribbean island were paid into a bank account controlled by the former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) claimed on Thursday.

Around £440,000 of emergency aid money has gone missing since it was donated two years ago and Fifa has frozen funding to the TTFF until it explains what has happened.

In 2010 Warner was special adviser to his country's federation and the cash from Fifa ($250,000) and the South Korean FA ($500,000) was paid into a TTFF account it claims only he controlled.

It is claimed the TTFF "surrendered their authority" to Warner, who resigned from football last year after being accused of bribery and he has refused to explain what happened to the money.

A TTFF statement said: "The TTFF acknowledges it is aware of funds made available by both Fifa and the Korean football federation for the football victims of Haiti's devastating earthquake in 2010.

"However, we are unable to confirm the quantum of funds received, as these monies did not go into the account used by the TTFF administration for its day-to-day operations, but instead to the TTFF's LOC (local organising committee) account as was requested by Mr Jack Warner, the former vice-president of Fifa and special adviser to the TTFF."

The situation puts FIFA in a bit of a spot -- will they demand financial accountability from the TTFF? If so, will FIFA then offer the same?

Nationalism in Football, Who Knew?

2012-02-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

FIFA is shocked, shocked:

Soccer’s governing body FIFA has questioned the Argentine FA over reports that the country’s championship could be renamed after the General Belgrano battleship sunk during the Falklands conflict with Britain in 1982.

AFA has been warned that the potential name change for the Clausura championship, second of two tournaments in the season, which began last weekend, could breach FIFA statutes.

However, an AFA spokesman said the championship had not been given that name and the issue would probably be discussed at the body’s weekly executive committee meeting late on Tuesday.

FIFA earlier issued a statement on the matter.

“FIFA contacted the Argentine FA (AFA) with regards to a potential change of name of the Liga de Primera Division. According to media reports, the league was set to be named after ‘Crucero General Belgrano’,” said FIFA.

FIFA has walked right into a mess here. You may recall not long ago England's desire to recognize its military, including those who participated in the Falklands War against Argentina, by wearing a poppy on their uniforms during a recent friendly against Spain. England protested vociferously, with interventions by David Cameron and Prince William, and FIFA ultimately relented.

At the time, John Leicester summed up the situation well :

England 1, FIFA 0. And at what cost to football?

With help from Prince William and well-timed indignation from Prime Minister David Cameron, England won this time. It bent FIFA’s arm so that its players can wear a symbol — a red poppy — during a football match this weekend, to remember the dead from the past century of wars Britain fought in.

But the begrudging ‘If you insist’ from FIFA sets an unnecessary and perhaps risky precedent.

Post-poppy, what’s next? North Korea demanding that its footballers keep their lapel pins honouring dictators Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung when they play?

Could China now request that its team be allowed to commemorate Japan’s 1937 slaughter of at least 150,000 people known as the “Rape of Nanking?”

Can Japan have a dove of peace or other symbol to remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The list could run on and on.

There are 200 or so countries under the FIFA umbrella, and each and every one of them has political and social issues, special days of historical importance, perceived injustices and long-held grudges, and nationally recognized symbols that are as dear to their hearts as the poppy is to those Britons who wear it ahead of Remembrance Day on Nov. 11 in tribute to soldiers killed from World War I onward.

Is FIFA now surprised to find other national soccer federations wanting to honor their military via symbolic acts? It will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Racism in European Football

2012-02-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

In the aftermath of the latest Suarez/Evra theatrics, Simon Kuper of the FT reports that British PM David Cameron will hold a summit on discrimination in sport. Kuper also suggests that the UK is not necessarily where the biggest problems lie:

Many other leagues give racism less attention. Italy’s football authorities, for example, have often been slow to acknowledge or condemn racist abuse heaped on the black Italian footballer Mario Balotelli. In 2009, after Juventus fans chanted “There are no black Italians” at Balotelli, Italy’s under-21 manager Pierluigi Casiraghi said: “It’s his personality that’s irritating. It’s not racism.” Italy’s then manager Marcello Lippi said “cases of racism in football don’t exist in Italy”, historian Simon Martin has written in his book Sport Italia. Mr Martin says: “So much here is like Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Italy needs to look at Britain. There is quite a lot to be learned from the British example.”

In Spanish football too, racism often goes unpunished. Fans are not the only culprits. Luis Aragones remained coach of Spain’s national team after calling Thierry Henry a “black shit” in 2004. Here, too, some in authority seem reluctant to tackle racism. After Real Madrid accused Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets of racism last year (he was later cleared), Barcelona’s vice-president Josep Maria Bartomeu said his own club would not report any racist incidents on the field. He explained, “I don’t know what Señor Busquets said and what they were talking about, but they are things that happen all the time in football.”

Laurent Blanc remained France’s manager despite having participated in a meeting at the French federation to discuss limiting the number of black youngsters entering football academies. Talking about supposedly over-physical and uncreative black footballers, Blanc had said: “The Spaniards told me, ‘We don’t have a problem. We don’t have any black players.’”

In the Netherlands last month, nobody was punished after Feyenoord fans chanted, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas chamber” at Ajax Amsterdam’s team bus. Indeed, the chant is a hardy perennial of Dutch football. And in eastern Europe, said the international footballers’ trade union Fifpro last week, “Players are still regularly the victim of racist incidents, committed either by spectators or clubs.” In the Czech Republic, 37 per cent of players polled by Fifpro reported having experienced racism or other discrimination.

Why We Watch: Zambia v. Ivory Coast

2012-02-13T07:08:00.001-08:00

Why We Watch: Phil M

2012-02-13T07:05:00.000-08:00

Richard Nixon and the NFL Blackout Policy

2012-02-13T06:24:00.000-08:00

Newly released tapes show President Nixon in 1972 seeking to negotiate with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to lift its legislatively-supported restriction on TV blackouts for home playoff games in exchange for his support for continuing the regular season blackout. The AP reports:

The president was a serious fan and in the early 1970s, he shared the anger of Washington residents who couldn't watch Redskins games on TV, former aides recalled. The Redskins routinely sold out and the NFL blackout policy left no way for Washington fans without tickets to watch home games. In October 1972, Nixon's Justice Department had even told Congress it was time for some modification of the blackout policy "in the public interest."

By December it was clear the NFL would black out that season's playoff games, including the first-round Redskins-Green Bay Packers game in Washington.

In a Dec. 19, 1972, telephone call just days before that game, Nixon told Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst to relay this message to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle: "If you make the move, for these playoff games, we will block any — any — legislation to stop anything else. I will fight it personally and veto any — any — legislation. You can tell him that I will veto it. And we'll sustain the veto. … Go all out on it and tell him he's got the president's personal commitment. I'm for pro football all the way, and I think it's not in pro football's interest to allow this to build up because before you know it, they'll have the damn Congress go all the way. We don't want Congress to go all the way."

Nixon told his attorney general that the NFL "should have absolute protection on all regular-season games" and that "if we can get the playoff games, believe me, it would be the greatest achievement we've ever done."

As Kleindienst began to outline what he would tell Rozelle, Nixon interrupted him.

"But let me say, that I want us to get some publicity out of this," the president said. "I just don't want to do this to accomplish it."

"I understand that," Kleindienst responded. "And that's what I'm going to tell him. That without putting your neck on the line …"

"Oh, I don't mind my neck on the line at all," Nixon said.

"Now see if you can work that out and tell him this would be the greatest move he could ever make," Nixon said at the end of the call. "He'd be a hero to the nation."

Incredibly, the next day Rozelle rebuffed the attorney general.

Television rights for professional sports have long been restricted by Congress as part of the general anti-trust exemption given to professional sports.

About Those English Managers

2012-02-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

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A Fairy Tale in Wellington

2012-02-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

American footballer Alex Smith is having a great run in the A-League:

As Australia’s A-League season enters the final stretch, the Wellington Phoenix’s American midfielder Alex Smith is enjoying a remarkable comeback while aiming to lead the New Zealand-based club to its first championship.

Smith is living a bit of a fairy-tale story:

In 2005, after completing a strong sophomore season at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Smith went to England to train with professional clubs. He intended to return to college for his junior year but, to his surprise, the N.C.A.A. ruled that he had lost his eligibility during his trip to England.

Smith ended up signing with Dallas of Major League Soccer in 2005, but did not stay with the club. As a young man, Smith had lost his focus on soccer and simply quit the game. He then packed his bags and moved to Australia for no other reason than it was a place he enjoyed once on a vacation. At the time, soccer was the last thing on his mind.

It was not long, however, that soccer would work its way back into Smith’s life.

“I got done with college and didn’t really want to get into the corporate America world,” Smith said. “I was just over the whole business of soccer. I just packed my bags and took off. I didn’t know anybody. I had a bit of money saved up and didn’t plan it. I started playing again by juggling around a little with a ball just to get in shape. I ended up meeting a few people, and that’s what led to everything.”

In 2010 Smith was back to playing competitive soccer when he joined for Fraser Park in the New South Wales Super League, a minor league in Australia. Shortly after, Smith was on the move to Sydney Olympic, another N.S.W. Super League team where he became one of the team’s best players in early 2011.

Following Yanks abroad is no longer an easy task, but this website (where the author of the piece excerpted above writes) helps.

Contador Guilty of Doping

2012-02-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure which is more troubling, that Alberto Contador was found guilty of doping or this statistic:

Only two Tour de France winners since 1995 — Carlos Sastre in 2008 and Cadel Evans last year — have not become embroiled in controversies involving performance-enhancing drugs.

The joker in the picture above, who had simulated a syringe application on Contador, apparently gets the last laugh.

Friday Linkage and a Rugby Documentary

2012-02-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

RUGBY: LIFEBLOOD OF NEW ZEALAND from 100distrib on Vimeo.
I watched the documentary above earlier this week on an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Sydney, enjoy! Some various links that went unblogged this week:

The Woolf Review of the ICC is out (here in PDF)
The FA has stripped John Terry of the England captaincy over to-be-resolved racial abuse charges
FIFA official comes off of a suspension for ethics violations, and is appointed to FIFA Olympic committee
Port Said, Egyptian football, Egyptian politics
Five different parties want to keep FIFA-ISL from being released, Swiss Court to decide
Lennart Johansson on BBC World Football Podcast -- He doesn't love Sepp Blatter
Not a joke -- The NCAA sanctions U of Nebraska for providing books to students who are athletes
US prosecutors drop investigation of Lance Armstrong, USADA still in hot pursuit

Lord Woolf's Review of the International Cricket Council

2012-01-31T19:39:00.000-08:00

FIFA is not alone in the world of sports governance in having its governance practices closely scrutinized. The world governing body for cricket, the International Cricket Council, will receive the report of an independent review of its governance this week.

The Telegraph has already predicted that the review's recommendations will meet strong resistance:

Woolf was commissioned to overhaul the ICC’s governance, a long-overdue project given the overtly political nature of a governing body that has never been able to rise above the vested interests of its members, most recently and obviously India.
Those same vested interests could yet stand in the way of the former Lord Chief Justice’s proposals, the most contentious of which is likely to be a recommendation to add independent directors to the ICC board.

Woolf is thought to be in favour of independent figures, but the proposal will be unpopular with several influential nations, including India, Australia and England.

The ICC board is dominated by the chairmen of the 10 Test-playing nations, and Woolf is thought to believe that independent figures will help add perspective and allow the board to make better strategic decisions.

In recent times ICC policy, including the number of teams in World Cup tournaments and the identity of the next chairman, has been set at the whim of powerful factions, sometimes in the space of a tea break.

Transparency International has submitted a detail report with recommendations for the ICC:

Cricket faces a number of obvious challenges — such as combatting the kind of spot-fixing that led to the sentencing of three Pakistani cricketers for corruption in 2011 — and those who manage the game must look at their existing structures.

Sport today is a multi-billion dollar business. Today’s sports governing bodies have to start operating as big businesses, using best business practices. The International Olympic Committee has already gone through a reform process; other international sporting bodies must too.

One of the key points we stressed in our submission is that while the players are the ones who face greatest public scrutiny, it is the administrators, both at the international and national level, who set the infrastructure and environment in which players and match officials operate. And this must be transparent and accountable.

The pressures on the ICC, FIFA and others suggest that while we may not yet be experiencing a "Sporting Spring," there are sure signs that the weather is changing.

Upcoming Seminar at University of Technology Sydney

2012-01-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'll be giving a talk on the governance of FIFA next Monday, February 6 at 4PM at the Centre for Corporate Governance, University of Technology Sydney. If you are in the area and want to discuss FIFA, please do attend, and you can email me for details.

When God Saved BYU Football

2012-01-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading Michael Oriard's excellent history of college football, Bowled Over: Big Time College Football from the 1960s to the BCS Era. In it he describes how in the late 1960s and early 1970s racial tensions and protests over football dramatically influenced several major programs, such as Wyoming and Oregon State.

Some of the protests focused on Brigham Young University, due to the Mormon church's policy against African-American's serving as priests. That prohibition was lifted in 1978 after God apparently revealed to the president of the Church that he had changed his mind about the priesthood. Oriard writes that the protesting college football players "changed Mormon theology" (p. 110)

In 2005 the BYU Daily Universe newspaper described the events as follows:

Fourteen University of Wyoming football players in 1969 wanted to wear armbands protesting alleged racial policies at BYU. Because of a policy set in place by coach Lloyd Eaton that prohibited players from protesting, the football players were suspended...

The University of Arizona in October 1970 sent a six-member “fact-finding committee” to determine if BYU was racist after they said “rhetoric had escalated too far” with regards to racism and the Western Athletic Conference.

The Daily Universe reported that the school's committee determined BYU was not racist, but was an “isolated institution whose members simply do not relate to or understand black people.”

The findings were presented on Arizona's campus the same week. Still, when BYU football players showed up at University of Arizona’s stadium a week later, they were met by 75 picketers demonstrating against racism at BYU.

Although spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said BYU does not keep track of individuals by race and so cannot track who was the first black person to attend BYU, Zobell said there were a few black athletes during the 1970s.

That fact still didn't quell some schools' anger.

Stanford and San Jose State University both refused to play BYU in any sport because of what they called racism at BYU.

Then in 1978, President Spencer W. Kimball of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that blacks were allowed to receive the priesthood.

In the 10 years prior to the revelation, BYU won 57 football games, and in the ten years following, 103. God must really love college football. (However, in fairness to God, LaVelle Edwards may deserve more credit.)

Why We Watch

2012-01-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

Quantifying the Value of a Football Manager

2012-01-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

In today's FT Magazine Simon Kuper has an essay on the evaluation of football managers in England's professional leagues based on the work of his Soccernomics co-author Stefan Szymanski, of the University of Michigan.

Here how Kuper describes Syzmanski's methodology:

[F]ootball does a bad job of valuing managers. Football managers are modern celebrities, yet the vast majority appear to add no value to their teams, and could probably be replaced by their secretaries or stuffed teddy bears without anyone noticing. Only a few managers, such as Sturrock and Alex Ferguson, consistently improve their teams. Yet some of these excellent few get overlooked. All these findings emerge from a 37-year study of English football managers...

If players’ wages determine results, it follows that everything else – including the manager – is just noise. Most managers are not very relevant. In the long run, they will achieve almost exactly the league positions that their players’ wages would predict.

Still, there is an important caveat. Players’ wages don’t explain everything – merely almost everything at most clubs. That leaves room for a few good managers to make a difference. The question then is: which managers finish consistently higher with their teams than you would expect given their wage bills? Or, to borrow a phrase from Real Madrid’s manager José Mourinho, who are the special ones?

Szymanski has tried to answer that question. He analysed the financial accounts of four-fifths of English professional clubs from 1973 to 2010, and identified the managers who consistently overachieved. These men are the elite.

We should note right away that Szymanski’s model gives more credit to overachieving managers at the top of football than at the bottom. England’s 92 professional teams are spread over four divisions. A manager in League Two who has the 90th smallest budget in England but manages to finish 80th nationwide is overachieving. However, a manager with the third-highest budget in England who wins the Premier League is probably overachieving even more.

Syzmanski looks at team performance (focused on 251 managers out of 699 total who held the position for 5 years or more and for which financial data was available for the period 1974 to 2010), after accounting for the expected position given the wages, which exhibit a strong correlation with league table position, as shown in the graph below from UEFA (here in PDF).

After accounting for wages, Szymanski then attributes the balance of unexplained variance in final league position to the "manager effect," an assumption with shortcomings that Szymanski is well aware of -- Kuper explains "factors besides the manager might have caused each club’s overachievement."

The attribution of unexplained variance to the "manager effect" is a serious weakness in such studies. This can been demonstrated quantitatively by looking at another recent effort to quantify the value added by the manager.

Bell at al. (2011) attempt to evaluate managers in a similar fashion to Szymanski, using less data and a more complex statistical methodology. Their paper, titled, "The Performance of Football Club Managers: Skill or Luck?" evaluates managerial performance 2004 to 2009 in the Premier League at the match level and account for a range of variables, such as injuries, suspensions, transfer spending . They find, as did Szymanski, that weekly wages alone explains more than half the variance in points awarded (56% to be exact).

But then they do something that I don't quite follow -- they create a complex multiple regression model that throws in a suite of variables (some of which are not statistically significant) and end up explaining only 20% of the variance (see their Table 1, p. 21), which represents a severe degradation from the simple bivariate model. They then attribute the remained 80% of unexplained variance to the "manager effect." If I've understood their methods correctly, this simply seems implausible. (I've emailed the authors and they are welcome to correct any misinterpretation.)

Despite the different approaches, the results of Bell at al. and Szymanski are similar -- for instance, the best managers in the Premier League appearing on both lists are Ferguson, Wegner, Beneitez, Moyes. Each of these managers has led teams with unusual success (Everton was top 6 in 3 of the 5 years looked at by Bell et al. and won promotion with Preston North End in the longer period looked at by Szymanski). So yes, these teams outperformed, with either Manchester United or Arsenal winning the Premier League championship in 15 of 20 seasons.

But were these teams successful because of the manager? Or were the managers successful because of the teams? What if it was both? And more? The only way that these studies can answer this question is by assuming the role of the manager in the variance to be explained, which is, unfortunately, the exact relationship that these studies are trying to pin down. So if you buy the assumptions of how to attribute the "unexplained variance" then these studies provide an answer. But if you don't buy the assumptions, then you wind up right where you started.

Consequently, I am not yet convinced that anyone has solved the riddle of effectively quantifying the value added by a manager, though the efforts by Syzmanski and Bell et al. represent a good start.

Unpublished Letter to the Financial Times

2012-01-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

I send the letter below to the Financial Times, but it didn't make the cut, so I am sharing it here. It is a response to Mark Pieth's op-ed in the FT last week.

Sir,

Mark Pieth, chairman of FIFA's Independent Governance Committee, is no doubt correct when he writes (FIFA must show a red card to corruption, January 19) that sporting organizations, "should give themselves anti-corruption compliance programmes and conflict of interest policies comparable to corporations." However, his advice is undercut by the fact that under such policies, it is highly likely that he and half or more members of the FIFA committee would be judged to have a conflict of interest due to financial or subsidiary relationships with FIFA. In Pieth's case, it has been reported in the Swiss media that he was paid more than $125,000 to draft a short report for FIFA prior to being appointed as chair of the committee. Such blatant and undisclosed conflicts of interest among the FIFA committee members were one factor cited by the international anti-corruption agency Transparency International when they recently terminated their participation in the FIFA reform process. TI must have recognized that their good name was at risk had they continued to participate in processes in which FIFA thumbed its nose at basic standards of good governance. FIFA's committee deserves to be heard, but they have started their work with a deficit of credibility.

Roger Pielke, Jr., Professor
University of Colorado

Tough Talk from Mark Pieth

2012-01-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

InsideWorldFootball reports on some very tough talk from Mark Pieth, chair of FIFA's independent good governance committee:

Speaking to German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Pieth responded when asked whether he expected more scandals: "I cannot judge yet," before adding "it would surprise me if it went off without scandal."

Pieth also said: "We must see to it that the gangsters do not escape in the wake of reform detractors."

Gangsters? Wow. Pieth offered a prediction as well:

"Many of those who now sit on the Executive Committee will not be there much longer," Pieth said.

"They will resign because of scandals."

More wow. He described the functioning of FIFA as a "gentleman's club":

Describing FIFA as an organisation which "lacks regulation" and with "a gentleman's club structures", he also said: "I would not say that FIFA is corrupt, but there are too many corrupt individuals in this structure."

Pieth also responds to some of the criticisms that he has recevied:

Pieth also took the opportunity to defend the fact that he is being paid by FIFA, describing it as a "red herring".

"Money always does create some risk, but I see no problem in our case," he said.

The fact that he is being paid for his services is not necessarily problematic. Rather, as I have argued, the non-disclosure of the significant payment from FIFA ($128,000 for for drafting a paper) prior to being appointed created serious credibility problems for a committee with the phrase "good governance" in its title.They need not have started off with that deficit.

Pieth's tough talk suggests that he is well sensitized to this issue, but the comments attributed to him suggest that has not yet addressed it head on. It does sound like Pieth's response to the criticism will be to recommend some strong medicine for FIFA. Stay tuned.

Bonita Mersiades on FIFA Reform

2012-01-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

Bonita Mersiades is a former official of the Football Federation Australia (a position from which she was sacked), who was once called "one of the most powerful woman in Australian sport." Last month at the Chartered Secretaries Australia Conference she presented a scathing assessment of the current state of football governance (here in PDF). Below are a few excerpts.

On FIFA:

What we seek is not complex: we want an international governing body that has the same level of transparency and accountability that we expect of our governments, major institutions and organisations. We want an organisation that is responsible to the many millions of people who play the game, the billions who are fans and one that meets standards befitting of its $1.3 billion turnover.

We believe that the only way in which real reform will be achieved is for good governments around the world to follow Damian Collins’ lead. FIFA deserves condemnation as it has brought football into disrepute – not on‐the‐field, but off it.

FIFA needs a clean slate. Governments, with the support of the corporate sponsors, should demand an interim time‐limited administration, led by an eminent person with a broad mandate to develop a new Constitution, governance arrangements and policies and to conduct new elections.

On the leadership of the FFA:

And, closer to home and thinking of the FFA, if Andrew Demetriou had been CEO of the AFL (Australian Rules football) for five years and had presided over a bid for an international competition which spent $46 million of taxpayers’ money and resulted in one vote; a national competition in which expansion had spectacularly failed and in which the clubs were losing between $20‐25 million a year; an 8% decline in participation rates of boys aged 5‐14 years playing the sport; six CFOs in five years; a 6% decrease in revenue and a 12% increase in costs; and a report from the Federal Government that showed the sport was in a state of financial calamity with its long term sustainability entirely dependent on the national team and the next TV deal, would he still have a job?

I suspect the answer would be no . . .

Read the entire presentation here in PDF.

Why We Watch: Top 100 Goals of 2011

2012-01-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Three of Five

2012-01-23T22:12:00.000-08:00

The Economist calls for women's tennis to adopt 3 sets of 5 as a standard match:

In itself, the shorter format demeans women. It gives ammunition to opponents of equal pay, who argue that women put in fewer hours and attract less interest than men. And the discrimination is unusually sexist. While most of the twentieth-century Olympic Games did not include women’s distance-running events because of similar old-fashioned prejudice, amends were made in the 1980s. Since then, women have competed in events as gruelling as the marathon with no ill effects. In tennis, meanwhile, the influence of the Victorian mindset is still apparent.

I agree.

The Superstar Effect: The Case of Tiger Woods

2012-01-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

A colleague (Thanks MS!) points me to a neat paper by Jennifer Brown of Northwestern University and NBER published recently in the Journal of Political Economy titled, Quitters Never Win: The (Adverse) Effects of Competing with Superstars. The paper looks at the effects that Tiger Woods had during his prime on the golf scores of field in PGA tournaments. The paper hypothesized that the presence of such a dominant player would lead to diminished performance by other top players, based on a theoretical presumption of reduced effort by those players.

The paper utilizes an impressive set of data from PGA Tour events from 1999 to 2010 and arrives at the following top-line conclusions:

The main results of the paper are as follows:
1.
The presence of a superstar in a tournament is associated with reduced performance from other competitors. In general, the adverse superstar effect is larger for higher-skilled golfers relative to lower-skilled players
2.
Reduced performance is not attributable to the adoption of risky strategies. Players do not appear to be “going for the green” more in the presence of a superstar. Moreover, the variance of players’ hole-by-hole scores in PGA tournaments is not statistically significantly higher when Woods is in the field relative to when he does not participate.
3.
Superstars must be “super” to create adverse effects: The adverse superstar effect is large in periods in which Woods is particularly successful and disappears during periods in which he is performing relatively poorly on the course.

Here are some numbers for the period 1999-2006:

In the first round, the performance of top-ranked players appears affected by the superstar. For major and regular events, top golfers’ first-round scores are 0.6 strokes higher when Woods is in the field relative to when he is not. In an examination of only regular events, the superstar effect is 0.54 strokes for the first round. The magnitude of the effect is substantial, particularly when one considers that an average of two (and as many as eight) players share first place after the first round of tournament play. Moreover, when we account for ties, the top two first-round scores in a tournament differ by an average of only 0.8 strokes. Note that unranked players’ scores are not significantly different when Woods participates. This nonresult aligns with the intuition that players who are low in the distribution of relative skill or who expect to finish in the nearly flat portion of the tournament prize distribution may not be adversely affected by a top competitor. For example, the difference between fortieth-place and forty-first-place prizes in an average regular tournament is less than $1,000; thus, a one-position shift in the distribution has little marginal impact on players’ performances. . .

In an examination of major and regular events, the tournament scores of ranked players are significantly higher when Woods is present: estimates suggest that the effect is between 1.3 and 0.7 strokes, depending on player rank. In only regular events, the superstar effect for top 20 players is positive but not statistically significant. In general, however, the size of the superstar effect is substantial for good PGA Tour golfers: on average, fewer than two strokes separate first and second place in PGA tournaments.

The paper also explores the possible influence of an impressive range of potential confounding factors, such as weather and television coverage and finds the results to be robust.

Why might this effect occur? The author presents data on Davis Love III who can reportedly earn $100,000 per day making a corporate appearance. The downside of the adverse superstar effect are small by comparison:

To understand the impact of the effect on Woods’s competitors, I ask: What if a single average player were able to overcome his own adverse performance by exerting effort and post scores that were one stroke better in tournaments with the superstar? I simulate the total winnings of each of the ranked players, assuming that his scores were one stroke lower in all events with Woods between 1999 and 2006. On average, a golfer would have earned approximately $28,000 more. Given that an average top 200 player played in 12 events with Woods and earned $3.4 million from the PGA Tour during the 8-year period, the return to effort seems small. For example, in the simulation, a one-stroke improvement by David Love III would have increased his average per-tournament earnings by approximately $10,000—considerably less than his reported daily rate for corporate appearances.

What about Woods?

How much would Tiger Woods’s earnings have been reduced if all of his competitors played as well as they did when he was not in the field? In my main results, I identify a superstar effect of approximately one stroke for players ranked in the top 200 in the world. I simulate the distribution of prizes if all ranked players’ tournament scores had been one stroke better when they competed against Woods; that is, I removed the estimated superstar effect from players’ scores. In 34 of the 136 tournaments that I studied, the simulated improvement in competitors’ performance had no effect since Woods was sufficiently alone in the score distribution to avoid a rank-order shift. In 20 events, the simulation shifted at least one golfer into a tie with Woods in the final tournament standing; in the remaining events, Woods shifted from a tie at a higher prize position to a tie at a lower prize position.

My calculations suggest that Woods’s PGA Tour earnings would have fallen from $54.4 million to $48.4 million between 1999 and 2006 had his competitors’ performance not suffered the superstar effect. By my estimates, Woods pocketed nearly $6 million in additional earnings because of the reduced effort of other golfers—prize money that would otherwise have been distributed to other players in the field. Viewed in this light, the superstar effect is economically substantial.

It is good to be a superstar, and apparently not so bad just being super either.

The Blade Runner

2012-01-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

The New York Times Magazine has a nice essay by Michael Sokolove on Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter born without lower leg bones and who runs on prosthetic legs. The piece touches on the debate over the difficult question of what it means to allow or not allow Pistorious to compete with runners who do not use prosthetic legs.The debate involves science, values and governance.

Here is an excerpt:

[I]n 2007, the I.A.A.F. instituted a new rule, ostensibly not aimed specifically at Pistorius, relating to running-shoe technology that employed “springs.” It then turned its attention to the world’s most prominent disabled runner. The I.A.A.F. videotaped a race involving Pistorius and had its scientific advisers analyze it. Several weeks later, Pistorius underwent tests conducted by an I.A.A.F.-chosen researcher at the German Sport University in Cologne. The organization then declared him ineligible based on findings that his “bouncing” locomotion was an advantage and that he required less oxygen and fewer calories than able-bodied runners going at the same speed.

An athlete, under international rules, is considered eligible to compete unless a good reason is shown otherwise, not unlike a criminal defendant who is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So Pistorius did not have to show that he was not augmented, just that the other side had not proved he was.

In his appeal to the Court of Arbitration, Pistorius was represented by Jeffrey Kessler, a Manhattan lawyer well known in the U.S. for negotiating collective bargaining agreements on behalf of N.F.L. and N.B.A. players. Kessler demolished the I.A.A.F.’s case, and it may not have been that difficult to do so. “All of it was pretty much nonsense,” Herr said of the I.A.A.F.’s conclusions. Another member of the team that tested Pistorius in Houston, Peter Weyand, a professor of applied physiology and biomechanics at Southern Methodist University, put it differently. “They brought the wrong scientific case forward,” he told me.

The unanimous verdict of the three arbitrators said that the data assembled from Pistorius at Rice showed that he used “the same oxygen amounts” and “fatigued normally.” It criticized the I.A.A.F. for seeking out possible isolated advantages that Pistorius derived from his prostheses while disregarding disadvantages — for example, his slow starts because he cannot burst from the starting blocks as quickly as his competitors. The correct measure for determining his eligibility, it said, should be whether he has an “overall net advantage” over the whole of the race. On the question of whether the Cheetah blades are springs, the arbitrators wrote, “A natural human leg is itself a spring.” The report was most critical of the I.A.A.F. process itself, which it said went “off the rails” and all but called it a kangaroo court.

If Pistorious makes it to London this summer, you can expect the debate over running in international competitions on prothestics to be taken up in earnest.

Here is a link to a peer-reviewed paper on the science of running on prosthetics, co-authored by two scientists who have worked with and represented Pistorius, and who have subsequently seen their views diverge on the issue. And here is Pistorius running in the IAAF championships last year, he is in the outside lane.

Friday Linkage

2012-01-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

A link to the Champagne paper "Which FIFA for the 21st Century" (in PDF, thanks PTG)
Has the"Arab Spring" influenced football outcomes in countries experiencing political change?
The always insightful Lasana Liburd on Jack Warner, a missing $28 million, and FIFA corruption
Bin Hammam vs. FIFA at C-A-S on Monday
FC Sion keeps its sense of humor (right)
A concise summary of decisions of the NCAA Convention last week

Independence in the Penn State Inquiry

2012-01-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

Louis J. Free, former director of the FBI, was hired last fall by the Board of Trustees at Penn State University to investigate the handling of the circumstances surrounding how the university and athletic department handled Jerry Sandusky, currently awaiting trial on various charges associated with alleged sexual abuse of children. Freeh is pictured above left with two members of the special committee of the PSU Board of Trustees, Ron Tomalis and Ken Frazier, chair.

After being briefed by Freeh this week, the Penn State faculty have raised question about the independence of the investigation, according to ESPN:

Freeh's investigative report into the worst scandal in Penn State's 156-year history will be made public after the second draft is reviewed by the board, he told the Faculty Council. Freeh's report will include recommendations for changes.

Freeh told the faculty members that only the Board of Trustees' special committee would be given the chance to review his draft reports, according to the faculty members who attended the meeting. Freeh said he would not share the draft reports with anyone else, they said.

"It was very easy to become suspicious about how fair this investigation is going to be," said one of the participants in the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I find it very difficult for a contractor who is essentially hired by the Board of Trustees to do a thorough investigation of the Board of Trustees, especially if they are given the chance to look at a draft report and suggest changes that will be made before the report is released to the public."

A second faculty member who attended Freeh's meeting with the Faculty Council, an executive committee of Penn State's Faculty Senate, said the former FBI director's presentation "left questions in many of our minds just how independent his investigation or report are going to be."

In interviews with "Outside the Lines" this week, both senior faculty members referred to notes they had taken during the meeting with Freeh. They both said Freeh repeatedly referred to the work he was doing on behalf of his "client," which is the Special Committee of Penn State's Board of Trustees. The special committee is chaired by Kenneth Frazier, chief executive of Merck & Company, and a member of Penn State's Board of Trustees.

"When you keep referring to doing work for your 'client,' it takes the independent feel right out of an investigation," said one meeting attendee describing Freeh's remarks. "His 'client' is the board of trustees, so how can he investigate his own client? It's a farce."

Independence is, in principle, not a difficult criteria to meet in the process of empaneling a committee or hiring an investigator, even if participants are compensated for their time. But when it comes to governance related to sports organizations -- and Penn State is both a university and home to a sports organization --principles of good governance seem a bit more challenging to implement.

Mark Pieth in the FT

2012-01-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

Mark Pieth, chair of FIFA's "good governance committee," has an op-ed on the FIFA reform process in today's FT. Here is an excerpt:

I chair the Independent Governance Committee reviewing Fifa reform (though I write here in a personal capacity), which yesterday held its first meeting. The committee is going to make strong and explicit recommendations to Fifa. We are optimistic but not naïve. We expect considerable resistance.

In sports governance more broadly, two areas must be addressed. First, states must adapt their legal structures so that corruption cases can be dealt with effectively. Second, sports governing bodies need to put their own houses in order.

The piece critiques the Swiss government's oversight of international organizations incorporated within its borders:

Traditionally, law enforcement agencies have been hesitant to deal with crimes committed by sports officials. Switzerland, the host of over 60 sports governing bodies, has an additional problem, since its anti-corruption laws insufficiently cover bribery and bribe taking by private persons. Allegations against officials of Fifa and its confederations around the world have been persistent, surfacing every time a president was elected or a hosting decision was taken. There is a clear need to supplement the laws.

By contrast, the piece does not discuss FIFA or its governance in any specificity. For that I suppose we'll have to await their report.

Truth or Whitewash?

2012-01-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

Writing at The Guardian, David Conn has an excellent post up on the fork in the road now faced by Mark Pieth and the reset of the "independent good governance committee" appointed by FIFA:

Football's world governing body, Fifa, could from Thursday face a watershed investigation into the corruption allegations lapping at its gates, or its Zurich HQ could be slapped with another coat of whitewash. The decision rests with the grandly titled independent governance committee, set up by Sepp Blatter, Fifa's president, to oversee the organisation's reform. Mark Pieth, professor of criminology at the Basel Institute, appointed by Blatter to chair this committee, told the Guardian that at Thursday's inaugural meeting it will consider an examination into what has been happening at Fifa.

"It is a matter for the independent governance committee to decide whether it is going to call for a fuller investigation into the past," Pieth said, "and who should be conducting it."

That will be a defining decision for a process that has struggled to attain any credibility since Blatter unveiled it in October, as the lead vehicle in what the 75-year-old termed his road map for reform.

As usual, Transparency International's Sylvia Schenk has some smart things to say:

The anti‑corruption organisation Transparency International, whose co-operation in charting the road map was liberally name-dropped by Blatter at that unveiling, initially praised the initiative but then refused an invitation to sit on the committee. Sylvia Schenk, TI's senior adviser for sport, questioned Pieth's independence from Fifa, because Fifa has already paid his institute, reportedly CHF120,000 (£85,000), for writing a preparatory report, Governing Fifa. Schenk also reiterated TI's recommendation in its own report that any reform must begin with an investigation and genuine clean-up of the governing body's past. . .

Schenk, of Transparency International, said a full investigation is vital if faith in Fifa is to be established. "You cannot go into the future and have credibility if you have many allegations about Fifa and senior people still there," she says.

Schenk explains how an organisation with a genuine will to reform would conduct such a process: "You appoint a body to conduct the investigation, for example a specialist law firm. They would look at the serious allegations and invite people to come forward confidentially with evidence. Then they would review which allegations are serious, and which evidence credible, for full investigation. Now you can say the ISL allegations are serious, as are those about Sepp Blatter's election."

Pieth's own report said the World Cup bidding process is open to "corruption, risk and conflict of interest concerns". Schenk says an investigation ought certainly to include the circumstances of awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively, and, she said, the 2006 event to Germany. "If you do not clear the allegations over such important matters, there can be no credibility for the future and there will be no peace for Fifa."

Pieth has found himself in a very difficult situation, somewhat of his own making. Given the composition of the committee, I would not be surprised to see the committee explain that an investigation into the past must be done, and someone should do it ... but just not them.

FIFA vs. National Sovereignty: Beer Edition

2012-01-18T18:36:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports:

Beer will sold at the 12 venues of the 2014 World Cup finals, FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said on Wednesday as he attempted to close all further discussion on a controversial issue in Brazil.

Voting on the bill for the World Cup Law has been held up over differences between the tournament hosts and world soccer's governing body, notably on the sale of alcoholic drinks at sports venues which is banned in Brazil.

The bill was scheduled to have been voted on by the chamber of deputies at the end of last year but it has been delayed by several issues including the sale of beer, with FIFA demanding protection of sponsors' trademarks.

"Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we're going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that's something we won't negotiate," Valcke said.

"The fact that we have the right to sell beer has to be a part of the Law," he told the foreign press corps in an interview in Rio de Janeiro, where on Thursday he will hold a meeting with the World Cup local organizing committee (LOC).

Alcoholic drinks have been banned in Brazil's stadiums since 2003 as part of the Supporters' Statutes, aimed at preventing violence among hardcore fans at football matches.

If Brazil refuses to give in to FIFA's demands, perhaps this will be the first World Cup venue changed due to a fight over beer. (Unlikely.)

What I am really interested in is how FIFA and Qatar will negotiate alcohol sales in 2022. (Carefully.)

Chronicle Roundtable on the Future of the NCAA, Parts 2 and 3

2012-01-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

Following up from last week, here are the 2nd and 3rd parts of The Chronicle of Higher Education's roundtable discussion with Taylor Branch, historian, C. Thomas McMillen, former athlete, former member of Congress who is active in NCAA governance, and Jeffrey Orleans, former executive director of the Ivy League.

FIFA Inspires Effort to Change Swiss Law

2012-01-18T06:01:00.000-08:00

One of the most direct mechanisms for holding FIFA accountable is under Swiss law where the association is incorporated. Switzerland is home to various multi-national organizations, including numerous sporting associations, because the Swiss government provides favorable treatment. But FIFA's various shenanigans have led lawmakers to initiate steps to tighten up some of that favorable treatment:

Carlo Sommaruga, a Geneva-based lawmaker and member of theSwiss Socialist Party, scheduled a proposal to make the briberyof individuals a criminal offense, he said today in a telephoneinterview from Geneva. . .

“I took FIFA as an example for my initiative to change thecorruption laws after the corruption allegations centered aroundawarding the World Cup to Russia and Qatar,” Sommaruga said. . .

In a Dec. 12 session 14 of 25 members of the Swisslegislative commission that votes on law questions supported theSommaruga’s initiative. To move the proposal forward, the samecommission in the upper house of parliament will have to vote onwhether the action is needed. . .

Currently there are no legal provisions for public prosecutors to investigate bribery at sports bodies like FIFA, which in Switzerland have the status of tax-privileged associations.

It is unclear what the prospects for passage of the proposal are in the Swiss legislature. The proposed action even if passed into law would be a small step -- if the Swiss government wanted to do something about FIFA, it has many tools at its disposal, waiting to be used.

FIFA News Round-Up

2012-01-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

Various FIFA news today:

Ricardo Teixiria is to file an appeal in Swiss court, tying up ISL documents for 6 months or more
Former FIFA official Jerome Champagne speaks out, floats possible bid for FIFA presidency
FIFA fires Jack Warner's son
Jack Warner says he has more dirt on FIFA to share
FIFA's negotiations with Brazil over terms of the 2014 World Cup are set to resume
FIFA suggests that some English football matches are fixed, Richard Scudamore hits back

Why We Watch

2012-01-15T21:41:00.001-08:00

2012-01-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

At the NCAA Convention yesterday Mark Emmert. NCAA president delivered the speech shown above. Here is how the AP reported on the speech:

NCAA President Mark Emmert would like to erase all the tawdry tales from his first full year in office.

On Thursday, Emmert asked university leaders to help him turn the page on a disastrous 2011 that included a child sex abuse scandal at Penn State that overshadowed NCAA violations at a handful of major football programs.Emmert wants to restore some of college sports’ core principles -- choosing education over money, amateurism over professionalism and abiding by the rules rather than ignoring them.

“What we have to do is work together to act on those values, to let the world know which fork in the road we’ve taken so we don’t have the same story line this year that we had last year,” he told about 2,000 delegates at the annual convention, just a few blocks from the NCAA headquarters.

“I know we can do it. We can do it in 2012.”For roughly 30 minutes, Emmert again expressed frustration with the rash of infractions charges, alleged ethical breaches and possible criminal conduct in 2011.

And Emmert made it perfectly clear how upset he was by striking a far different tone Thursday than he did in his first state of the association address last year in San Antonio, Texas.There, Emmert paraded “model” student-athletes across the stage, a production that even included eventual Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III.

This time, speaking sternly and with few laugh lines, Emmert broadly recounted some of the most damaging phrases he’d heard: College sports is about winning at all costs, it’s all about the money, everybody cheats and the term student-athlete is an oxymoron.

“I’ve heard people say that there are no ethics and no integrity in college sports and the whole system is broken. But here’s the really bad news. There’s truth in some of those criticisms,” Emmert said. “What parts of those stories are true? Sometimes we have seen behaviors that don’t match our values. We do have some people that want to win at all costs. We have some student-athletes that don’t care about getting an education and some that simply don’t get the education they deserve. The worst thing to me is that they completely overshadow all of the good things that are going on in intercollegiate athletics.”

The push for change has already begun.

Why We Watch

2012-01-12T18:50:00.001-08:00

The Chronicle Discusses the Future of College Sports

2012-01-12T06:08:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education conducts a roundtable discussion on the future of college sports with Taylor Branch, historian, C. Thomas McMillen, former athlete, former member of Congress who is active in NCAA governance, and Jeffrey Orleans, former executive director of the Ivy League.

Above is Part 1 of 3. I'll post up the next 2 parts shortly.

Incentives Matter: Why the Lack of NCAA Basketball Road Games?

2012-01-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

The WSJ reports that the top NCAA men's basketball season is now half over and 20% of teams have yet to register a road win:

The problem isn't so much that no one can win on the road (although it is notoriously difficult in men's college basketball). It's that teams hardly try.

Kentucky is the worst offender of all. The Wildcats, who should get their first true road win Wednesday at Auburn, have played just one road game, which they lost to Indiana.

Top programs tend to spend almost all of their pre-conference schedules playing glorified exhibition games at home and neutral-site tournaments. Because of this, teams that are expected to make the NCAA tournament can get well into January with highly sketchy résumés.

If you do the math you'll find that the AP top 10 teams (on January 9th) have collectively played 162 games with only 29 of them (or 18%) played on the road.

The reason for this situation would seem to be obvious: so long as coaches are rewarded for victories and a ticket to March Madness is a function of reaching a mythological 20-win threshold, then coaches and athletic departments of the stronger programs will try hard to fill the schedule with cupcakes at home.

Are the 2012 Olympics a Keynesian Stimulus?

2012-01-10T12:36:00.001-08:00

Last week, Jeremy Hunt, the UK Culture Secretary, characterized the UK government's spending on the 2012 as a Keynesian stimulus to the economy:

The minister responsible for the Olympics rounded on those attacking the government for spending money to promote the UK, saying the event was “a massive Keynesian boost to the economy”. . .

“I do think it’s a stroke of luck that we are hosting the games right now,” he said. “There are people who say that doing a project like this is a massive Keynesian boost to the economy. That is definitely the case, in terms of the money being spent.”

Writing on his blog at Forbes, Stephan Szymanski, an economist at the University of Michigan who studies the business of sport, takes strong issue with that claim:

To be Keynesian, there needs to be additionality. Already planned government expenditures cannot restore confidence or demand since they formed part of peoples’ expectations and beliefs before the recession occurred. The core of Keynesian theory is the restoration of business confidence by providing a pleasant surprise to compensate for the unpleasant shock.

Now, if the government were to announce that it was going to go over its budget and spend an extra, say, £5 billion on the games (above and beyond the £9.3 billion) then this would qualify as a Keynesian stimulus, but we are not likely to hear a confession along these lines any time soon.

But even then, this would be nothing more than a drop in the ocean. Gordon Brown’s stimulus package in 2008 was £500 billion, and some economists argue that even that was too little. But the present government with its commitment to cutting the budget deficit and public debt are in any case pursuing the opposite of a Keynesian policy. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.

You can see Szymanski's 2011 presentation on the Economics of the 2012 Olympics which he presented at the Play the Game conference here in PDF and in the video below.

Play the Game 2011. Plenary session: Chasing the White Elephants - Mega-events for the Public Good, part 2 from Play the Game on Vimeo.

The Stuff of Dreams

2012-01-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Frontline on the NCAA, Parts 2 and 3 of 3

2012-01-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Watch Money and March Madness on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Part I of this excellent documentary is here. Discussion coming later this week.

FC Sion Docked 36 Points by Swiss FA

2012-01-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

In the latest turn of events related to FC Sion's row with FIFA, the Swiss FA has capitulated to FIFA's threat to sanction the national association if it did not penalize the rogue club. The Swiss FA has levied a 36 point penalty -- 3 points for every game in which the disputed players participated in -- effectively relegating the club for next season.

While the Swiss FA implemented only part of FIFA's demands, FIFA was quick to accept the punishment and declare the matter closed. For its part, FC Sion have filed criminal charges against FIFA (for extortion) and the club's supporters (pictured above) are none too happy about the turn of events.

It is hard to keep track of FC Sion's various legal maneuvers in civil courts, at the CAS and now in criminal courts. I'd guess that their wage bill for lawyers might exceed that of their players.

FIFA Responds to Warner's $1 Rights Allegation

2012-01-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

FIFA has responded to Jack Warner's allegations that he was able to purchase TV rights to the 1998 World Cup for $1 in exchange for supporting FIFA president Sepp Blatter (both seen above in friendlier times):

FIFA replied that Warner had been awarded television rights for Trinidad since 1986 and that it was normal practice at the time for them to be provided for only a symbolic fee.

"Until 1998, TV rights were provided by the rights-holders for symbolic sums in many territories (for example in Africa), in order to maximise the worldwide television coverage and also to support national associations and confederations with a source of revenue for football development," it said.

It added: "Jack Warner obtained the TV rights for the FIFA World Cup in the Caribbean, for the purpose of supporting football development in the Caribbean Football Union, already in 1986, and not 1998.

"Such rights were ceded in order to provide an additional source of revenue for football development in the CFU."

It added: "TV rights for the 2002 FIFA World Cup in the Caribbean were approved by the FIFA executive committee at their November and December 2001 meetings, not after the 2002 elections."

We have a situation of he said-they said -- which is utterly impossible for any observer to make sense of without further information. At least one close observer is not satisfied with FIFA's response --Damian Collins, British MP says:

"[FIFA] have not provided satisfactory answers to these questions at all, especially as to why TV rights to World Cup finals have been handed out to senior members of Fifa's executive committee."

Whatever the truth of the matter, there is an important lesson here. Transparency in business dealings is no just a good idea, but it can protect an organization against allegations.

If Warner is correct in his allegations, then great transparency would have prevented the corruption from occurring in the first place.

If FIFA is correct in its refutation, then greater transparency would protect the organization from false clases, which would be more easily refuted.

Either way, greater transparency makes very good sense.

Did Mark Pieth Threaten a Journalist with Legal Sanctions?

2012-01-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

The letter from journalists to Mark Pieth (which I discuss here), chair of the FIFA "Good Governance" committee, contains an explosive allegation -- that Pieth threatened a journalist with legal action in order to try to keep hidden FIFA's payments to him:

[W]e are concerned that Professor Mark Pieth, through an employee, threatened legal action against one of our colleagues investigating how much Pieth was paid by FIFA and how much he will get from FIFA in future for the work in the so called Independent Governance Committee (IGC), although Professor Pieth eventually confirmed the figures.

I do not know Mark Pieth, though he is widely respected in the community. Thus, I find the allegation levied above to be both remarkable and troubling, especially so for an academic who has written the following (p. 188, here in PDF) in the context of recommendations on "good governance" to the United Nations:

In order to safeguard against conflict of interest situations, a robust financial disclosure and conflicts of interest regime should include a requirement that all United Nations staff and consultants, including "$1 dollar a year consultants," disclose in writing to the Ethics Office any financial interest or business relationship of his or her own or of immediate family members that could represent a conflict with his or her responsibilities or that could reflect unfavorably upon the integrity of the Organization.

Pieth should respond to the allegation.

Journalists Refuse FIFA's Invitation to Testify

2012-01-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

FIFA's "Good Governance" Committee, chaired by Mark Pieth, has invited a dozen journalists to provide testimony to the committee as input to its deliberations. Apparently, the hearing is supposed to be off-the-record and behind closed doors -- That in itself is a damning statement about the integrity of the reform process. Several of the reporters are refusing to participate, and have written a letter to Mark Pieth explaining their decision.

While I understand the principled stand of these journalists, my two cents of advice to them is to participate in the process, even if they see it as deeply flawed. By testifying they place the ball in FIFA's court to respond. By not participating they give FIFA a free pass to ignore their critiques.

Here is an excerpt from the letter, signed by Andrew Jennings, Jens Weinreich and Jean François Tanda and a similar letter was sent by Thomas Kistner, detailing 20 questions/recommendations from these journalists:

What should be happening:
Without delay Blatter can and must publish his personal copy of the report by Zug Investigating Magistrate Thomas Hildbrand into kickback corruption at FIFA and the recipients of more than 140 million Swiss Francs (US$100 million) in bribes paid by former marketing company ISL/ISMM.We are advised that there is no legal impediment to Blatter putting his copy online today. We do not believe his claims that unnamed people are delaying publication by him. We are told that the report destroys his claim in June 2010 to have been ‘cleared’ by the investigation.
Blatter should publically instruct his friend Jean-Marie Weber, who organised the 140 million Swiss Francs worth of kickbacks paid by ISL, to disclose the identities of all sports officials who received them.
FIFA should adopt immediately genuine transparency. This means putting all FIFA information online – as do all first world governments – including audio/visual streaming and written minutes of all committees, accompanied by all reports submitted. All votes on all occasions must be recorded by name.
FIFA’s published accounts are a disgrace, designed to disguise how football’s money is spent – and on whom. KPMG should be replaced by an auditor committed to transparency.
Publication of all confidential management letters from auditors KPMG since 1999. These contain explosive evidence about misuse of FIFA funds and criminal money-laundering through FIFA’s Finance Department.
All FIFA financial documentation since 1998 when Sepp Blatter became FIFA President should be put on-line – and then subjected to independent forensic examination.
This material should include all payment orders made by Blatter using his astonishing power to be sole signatory of cheques. Let the world see a list of who got the money.
FIFA’s Finance Department must produce the documentation of the $1 million kickback of March 3, 1997 from ISL to Havelange that was mistakenly sent to FIFA’s UBS account and then re-routed by General Secretary Blatter to Havelange.
Immediate suspension of FIFA ExCo member Nicolas Leoz, identified in court in Zug in March 2008 as the recipient of $130,000 in bribes from ISL. (Later we discovered he got an additional $600,000!)
FIFA can achieve the above, swiftly, without any outside intervention. That would show a genuine commitment to reform. Then the investigations can commence.
We think that the only credible approach is for Professor Pieth to be empowered to hire a reputable, independent investigative company to conduct due diligence into all areas of alleged FIFA corruption. We suggest the following crucial areas of investigation followed by rapid publication:
The salaries, bonuses and other benefits paid in the last decade to Blatter, Jérôme Valcke and all departmental directors.
All fees, bonuses and expenses – submitted and paid – of ExCo members in the last decade. And details of their Swiss tax arrangements.
The contracts and cost since 1998 of Blatter’s use of expensive chartered jets, his destinations and justifications for trips.
The allegations of corruption in the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and to Qatar in 2022 and the actions, where appropriate, of ExCo members Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma, Hany Abo Rida and Amos Adamu. This crucial investigation should be handled professionally by law enforcement agencies or an independent investigation company, and where possible, liaising and assisting the current FBI investigations.
Investigating all aspects of the FIFA-related activities of Worawi Makudi of Thailand including the disclosure of money from FIFA’s Goal and FAP-programme and also World Cup TV rights for Thailand.
Investigation of allegations made in Argentina that FIFA finance committee chair Julio Grondona controls offshore accounts, mostly in Switzerland, containing $120 million. There seems no obvious source of this wealth.
Investigation is long overdue into how Chuck Blazer could simultaneously be both Treasurer and General Secretary of CONCACAF – and the secret payment to him of $10 million in recent years as ‘commissions.’ Have his offshore assets come from FIFA funds – including his vintage Mercedes car registered in Zurich in FIFA’s name?
Re-open the investigation into Jack Warner and extend it to embrace every payment of any kind since 1998 to Warner, members of his family, companies owned by him including Simpaul travel agency, the CFU, CONCACAF and the João Havelange Centre of Excellence.
Investigate Blatter’s election campaign expenses for every election including 1998. In that campaign he charged his expenses to FIFA.
Who paid Walter de Gregorio and Brian Alexander to organise Blatter’s campaign in 2011 to retain the Presidency? Mr Alexander does not appear to be employed by FIFA but he briefs reporters at FIFA House on behalf of Blatter. Who pays him now?

Frontline on the NCAA, Part 1 of 3

2012-01-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

Watch Money and March Madness on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Part 1 of Frontline's excellent look at the NCAA. I'll discuss in a subsequent post, after putting up Parts 2 and 3.

Big Stakes for Les Miles

2012-01-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

A win in next week’s BCS national title game would give LSU coach Les Miles a $5.88-million salary increase, CNBC’s Darren Rovell reports. That’s thanks to a clause in his contract guaranteeing him a minimum of $1,000 more per year than the highest-paid SEC coach should he win the national title.

Right now the league’s highest-paid coach is Alabama’s Nick Saban, Miles’ opponent in the BCS contest. Saban is scheduled to make a base salary of $4.73 million in 2012. Miles, who makes $3,751,000, would then be bumped to $4,731,000. That’s a boost of $980,000 a year for the remaining six years of his contract.

Amateur athletics indeed.

My Bundesliga Dreams, Shattered

2012-01-05T09:20:00.001-08:00

The Bundesliga is taking advantage of the mis-season break to publish some interesting statistics on the players in the league. The average age of players is declining:

One trend is clear over that time-span: the average age of a top-flight team's most influential players is coming down. Ten years ago, for example, 25 was the age that represented the most on-the-pitch time in the Bundesliga. This season, the 23-year-olds lead the way.

"Older" players are also getting younger:

While coaches are giving promising talents the opportunity to establish themselves ever earlier, the prospects for those at the other end of the age scale are not so rosy. Many players over 30 are now having to plan for their "second career" considerably earlier than used to be the case. In an interview with the football magazine 11 Freunde, Borussia Mönchengladbach's youth team coordinator Roland Virkus confirmed the trend: "The lads are already being physically and mentally prepared for a professional career at youth level. But I think the overall cycle will change again. The performance curve of the current generation is moving rapidly upwards at an early age, but it will drop off earlier as well. Many players could well be peaking at 26 or 27."

At any rate, the possibility of an outfield player taking to the pitch these days at the ripe old age of 43 seems distinctly far-fetched. Klaus "fir tree" Fichtel did just that for Schalke 04 back in 1987-88, setting a new benchmark for Bundesliga seniority that stands to this day. By way of comparison, 36-year-old Hannover 96 midfielder Altin Lala is the oldest Bundesliga player to turn out this season.

Now that I have reached that "ripe old age" I guess it is time to give up hopes of making an appearance in the Bundesliga ;-) There will always be Boulder Indoor Soccer!

Deadspin on the New Offsides Coin from the Royal Mint

2012-01-04T11:27:00.000-08:00

Deadspin on the new Olympic coin from the Royal Mint:

The image "is designed to provoke discussion," but I think the real discussion centers on the square team running the rare 1-6-3 formation.

A Lesson in Legitimacy from the FA

2012-01-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

The English FA's 115 page report (here in PDF) on its investigation of Luis Suarez of Liverpool, who was accused of racially abusing Patrice Evra of Manchester United, is an object lesson in transparency and accountability, which results in enhanced credibility and legitimacy of the organization. FIFA should take note.

The report goes into excruciating detail as to what happened on the pitch, carefully soliciting alternative points of view among participants and even requesting academic experts to weigh in on how to interpret slang and insults across multiple languages used by players in the heat of a high-pressured match.

The FA commission judged that Patrice Evra was the more credible witness, for a range of reasons, and hence decided to level a sanction against Suarez. But the judgement itself is largely irrelevant to the issue of legitimacy. Indeed, one could completely disagree with the judgment and still find the process to be legitimate.

This is exactly what Liverpool FC has done. In a statement released yesterday, after some huffing and hawing, the club announced that it will accept the sanction against their star player:

Liverpool Football Club have supported Luis Suarez because we fundamentally do not believe that Luis on that day - or frankly any other - did or would engage in a racist act. Notably, his actions on and off the pitch with his teammates and in the community have demonstrated his belief that all athletes can play together and that the colour of a person's skin is irrelevant.

Continuing a fight for justice in this particular case beyond today would only obscure the fact that the Club wholeheartedly supports the efforts of the Football Association, the Football League and the Premier League to put an end to any form of racism in English football.

It is time to put the Luis Suarez matter to rest and for all of us, going forward, to work together to stamp out racism in every form both inside and outside the sport.

It is for this reason that we will not appeal the eight-game suspension of Luis Suarez.

Kudos to the FA for showing that non-governmental organizations can meet high standards of transparency, due process and credibility, all of which further the legitimacy of the organization's governance role.

Mid-Season EPL Prediction Contest Update

2012-01-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

Before the season started I invited readers to participate in a season-long English Premier League prediction contest. We are now at the mid-season break, which provides a convenient time to evaluate where things stand.

Before getting to the results, let me explain the methodology used to evaluate the predictions. I identified the final standings at the end of the 2010-2011 season as the baseline evaluation of skill. Skill refers to the ability to out-perform a naive baseline. The choice of naive baseline is arbitrary. Specifically, for each place in the table, I take the difference between that place and a predicted place and square it. So if you predicted Man City in 4th and they are in 1st, then the difference is 3, and squared is 9. I then add up the squared differences for all 18 places, and then take the square root of that sum. That gives a measure of the total error in the prediction.

Here are the results at mid-season:

keeperusa	17.0
Arthur	17.3
n-g	17.5
Max	19.0
Roger	19.4
f.a.e	19.5
Elijah	20.1
itzik	20.5
SKILL	20.6
Unknown	22.0
CNY Roger	24.2

You'll note that the standings are tightly packed and that the threshold for skill appears more generous than the Bundesliga contest, which makes sense. n-g won the contest last year and is putting in a good showing at mid-season, but keeperusa and Arthur leading the way.

Right now Bolton, Norwich and Blackburn account for the greatest errors in the predictions. Stay tuned!

FC Sion Raises Stakes with FIFA Once More

2011-12-29T20:43:00.000-08:00

In the latest turn of FC Sion's disputes with football powers, the club has accused FIFA of blackmail and filed a complaint with a Swiss prosecutor:

Swiss football club FC Sion have filed a complaint against football’s world governing body, Fifa, with the Zurich public prosecutor.

The move, announced on the club’s website on Thursday, is the latest in a bitter struggle over Sion’s fielding of players whom Fifa has ruled to be ineligible. Fifa’s headquarters are in Zurich.

The complaint is a response to Fifa’s announcement on December 17 that it would suspend the Swiss Football Association on January 14 if it did not take action against Sion by deducting points they won against Swiss teams in games in which the disputed players were fielded.

If the suspension goes ahead, it will affect all branches of the Association. This includes not only the national team, but also FC Basel, who unexpectedly won a place in the knock-out rounds of the Champions League with a victory over Manchester United.

Sion accuse Fifa of “unacceptable blackmail” in connection with this threat, saying it is trying to force the Association to contravene its own rules and violate Swiss legislation. It cites article 181 of the Swiss legal code, which covers coercion.

FC Sion is catching FIFA at an opportune time, from their perspective, as FIFA is fighting battles on many fronts. However, a walk back by FIFA on the Swiss sanctions would provide no resolution to the long-simmering dispute of FC Sion's Europa Cup eligibility.

I'd guess that this little skirmish will be but a footnote in the larger battle of lex sportiva and lex imperium.

New Corruption Allegations Against FIFA

2011-12-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

So Jack Warner is making good on his promise to let a few skeletons out of the FIFA closet:

Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner saidThursday he was awarded World Cup television rights for as little as $1 inreturn for helping Sepp Blatter win elections for the presidency of worldsoccer’s ruling body.

Warner, who resigned from FIFA in June amid bribery allegations, said in astatement that the organization awarded him the 1998 World Cup rights in hisnative Trinidad & Tobago for $1 after he helped Blatter win a “brutal”campaign to become FIFA president.

A former president of regional body CONCACAF and the Caribbean FootballUnion, Warner also said he was sold the rights for the 2002 and 2006 World Cupsafter helping Blatter get re-elected in 2002, and later bought the 2010 and 2014rights.

British MP Damian Collins, a long-time critic of FIFA, has called for an independent investigation:

These are serious allegations that must surely go to the very top of FIFA and need to be fully and independently investigated.

If true, how could deals like this be done without the knowledge of the most senior people in the organisation? This is a question that has to be answered by Sepp Blatter and it also demonstrates why there has to be a committee of investigation and inquiry which can act independently of the President and FIFA's Executive Committee.

Whilst these charges from Jack Warner are new and shocking, they cannot be regarded as a total surprise.

In front of our Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in May 2011, former England Football Association Chairman, Lord Triesman alleged that Jack Warner had asked England to pay for the broadcast rights for the World Cup 2010 to be shown "on large screens throughout Haiti."

It turned out, according to the Dingemans report presented to FIFA by the FA, that the pay TV World Cup rights in the Caribbean at that time were owned by a company, SportsMax, whose holding company JD International "acts on behalf of the Caribbean Football Union [then President, one Jack Warner] in selling TV rights for the region".

This means, as the FA stated in an email to FIFA on 11 May 2011, that Lord Triesman was alleging that Jack Warner was asking for payment for TV rights that he "in fact owned."

FIFA was asked by the FA to consider investigating this further, along with a number of other allegations made by Lord Triesman, and refused to do so.

What will FIFA do? Probably what it has always done.

What will Mark Pieth do? Who knows, but this new revelation provides him a face-saving chance to extricate himself from the pickle he has gotten himself ino.

We know what Jack Warner is going to do ... he promises to let a few more skeletons out of the closet in due course.

Universities Object to Multi-Year Athletic Scholarships

2011-12-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

Universities are standing firm against anything that moves college sports towards more of a profession "pay for play" model. Businessweek reports:

For the second time in less than two weeks, schools are objecting to a reform measure sought by university presidents and endorsed by NCAA president Mark Emmert.

More than 75 schools are asking to override a plan approved in October to allow multi-year athletic scholarships rather than the one-year renewable awards schools currently provide. That's the minimum number of dissenters needed for reconsideration by the Division I Board of Directors when it meets next month in Indianapolis at the annual NCAA convention. The NCAA announced the change the Friday before Christmas.

On Dec. 15, the NCAA suspended plans to give athletes a $2,000 stipend for living costs not covered by scholarships after at least 125 schools objected. The higher number of protests allows the organization to immediately put the change on hold.

Both measures were pushed by Emmert and adopted as emergency legislation after a presidential summit in August.

Indiana State University, a program with a comparatively small athletic program, explains their objections in unvarnished terms as follows (here in PDF):

This proposal, if accepted, is going to create some real nightmares if put into practice. Biggest concern pertains to the nature of college athletics. Coaches are going to be compelled to give these multi-year scholarships to compete on the recruiting front with other schools. Problem is, many coaches, especially at the FCS level, in all sports, are usually not around for five years and when the coach leaves, the new coach and insitutiton may be "stuck" with a student athlete they no longer want (conduct issues, grades, etc.) or the new coach may have a completely different style of offense/defense that the student athlete no longer fits into. Yet, the institution is "locked in" to a 5 year contract potentially with someone that is of no "athletic" usefulness to the program. Obviously, the student athlete can leave school if he/she wants and there's no harm done; but it doesn't work both ways.

Leaving it up to the discretion of the institutions to decide whether to use multi-year scholarships just creates another competetive/recruiting disadvantage for many schools whose coaching positions are many times mere "stepping stone" for a coach/staff to get to the higher paying, more prominent jobs. To get the recruits that will make a program better, coaches are going to be forced to offer these multi-year scholarships just to make sure they have the recruits to help them win.

The current system works. We don't need to get into bidding wars where one school offers a $75% for 2 years and the other school then offers 85% for 3, etc., etc. This puts the kid into a situation where they almost need an agent/advisor just to determine the best "deal." Again, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

The problem of course is that it is broke. St. Francis University registers similar complaints:

This goes against everything the NCAA has stood for over the years; in fact on several occasions it has been stressed that student-athletes are to be integrated into the student body and given the same treatment as the general students. In addition, this proposal will likely result in negotiation tactics which are going to more closely resemble professional contract negotiations as student-athletes strive for the "best deal." The next step of the process will possibly involve "third parties" (the politically correct term for "agents" which is a bad word in the NCAA world) representing the student-athletes in these negotiations.

The lack of big schools objecting to the proposal is worth noting.

Bias, Conflict of Interest and Disclosure in College Football Coaches Polls

2011-12-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

In college football in the United States the so-called "coaches' poll" of teams has served as a key way to rank teams, with implications for bowl invitations and financial rewards. Who better, one might think, than the coaches themselves to rank teams on a weekly basis?

A new study by Matthew Kotchen and Matthew Potoski (CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISTORT PUBLIC EVALUATIONS: EVIDENCE FROM THE TOP 25 BALLOTS OF NCAA FOOTBALL COACHES-- here in PDF and a summary at VoxEu) provides empirical evidence which shows that the expert judgments by the coaches are materially influenced by their roles as coaches and the potential for economic and other benefits that result from the rankings.

The paper concludes:

This paper provides robust evidence that private incentives have a distorting influence on the way coaches rank teams in the USA Today Coaches Poll for college football. While coaches are tasked with providing unbiased rankings of teams, they face incentives that pose potential conflicts of interest. These arise because of reputation and nancial rewards that depend on how teams are ranked and whether teams are in position to receive an invitation to one of the high-prole and lucrative BCS bowl games. We nd, based on two distinct identication strategies in our statistical analysis, that conflicts of interest bias coach rankings in predictable ways.

The pattern of results shows the importance of both reputation benets and direct financial payoffs. Coaches have clear incentives to rank both their own team and other teams in their athletic conference more favorably. We find, on average, that coaches rank teams from their own conference nearly a full position more favorably and boost their own team's ranking more than two full positions. We also find that it does not matter if a coach's team simply plays a team during the season, but coaches rank teams they defeated more favorably by more than half a position. Coaches thus make their own team look better by ranking more favorably teams they defeated.

The analysis also finds evidence that financial payoffs for the top bowl slots result in a detectable effect on the rankings of teams within their own conference, with revenues from bowl payouts typically shared across the conference. A marginal bowl payoff of $3.3 to 5 million equates to one position higher in the rankings.

The bias that the study documents occurred during a time when the final individual coaches' polls were made public, leading to a natural question of what bias might have been in the era before disclosure. The study also provides some insight as to the effects of public disclosure on coaches rankings:

Our study is based on all of the publicly available ballots, and coaches knew their ballots would be made available when filling them out. Does the disclosure cause them to evaluate teams differently? We do not have undisclosed ballots to make direct comparisons, but as a rough measure, we can look at the pattern of aggregate Coaches Poll results compared to computer rankings, before and after disclosure began in 2005. Our goal is to see if coaches' rankings become more similar to the computer rankings when their ballots are subject to public scrutiny.

Here is what they found:

For each team in each poll we calculate the difference between the Coaches Poll and computer rankings and average the absolute difference among observations separately for all those before and after disclosure began in 2005. . . the differences drop during both the pre and post-disclosure periods, but the drop is larger after disclosure by nearly twice as much. This implies that the difference between the Coaches Poll and the computer ranking, between two adjacent polls in the same year, is more than 100 percent smaller when the ballots are made public. It appears, therefore, that coaches are aware of their biases because their rankings move closer to the objective (computer) rankings when disclosed for public scrutiny. That coaches rankings are noticeably different under public disclosure raises further questions about how much stronger the biases are when there is no disclosure, and the result underscores the importance of public disclosure to minimize bias.

The study, as the authors note, is of relevance well beyond college football, and tells us something about the factors that shape expert judgments, when those judgments are made in the context of bias and conflicts of interest.

Sports Quizes of the Year

2011-12-25T12:34:00.001-08:00

The Guardian has two excellent sport quizes of the year for your enjoyment. The first is a warm-up and can be found here.

I got 11 of 12 correct (missed the damn boxing question!), how about you?

For the intrepid, you can find their 90 question quiz here, with results to be released December 27th.

Enjoy!

Mid-Season Bundesliga Prediction Contest Update

2011-12-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

Before the season started I invited readers to participate in a season-long Budesliga prediction contest. we are now at the mid-season break, which provides a convenient time to evaluate where things stand.

Before getting to the results, let me explain the methodology used to evaluate the predictions. I identified the final standings at the end of the 2010-2011 season as the baseline evaluation of skill. Skill refers to the ability to out-perform a naive baseline. The choice of naive baseline is arbitrary. Specifically, for each place in the table, I take the difference between that place and a predicted place and square it. So if you predicted Bayern in 4th and they are in 1st, then the difference is 3, and squared is 9. I then add up the squared differences for all 18 places, and then take the square root of that sum. That gives a measure of the total error in the prediction.

Here are the results at mid-season:

Max	10.7
Roger	14.7
Spiegel	15.1
rjtklein	21.7
Reiner	23.5
SKILL	27.8
ob	28.1
Werner	30.3

Four of the six participants show skill, if last year's table is used as the naive baseline, but only two show skill if Der Spiegel's pre-season prediction is used as the naive baseline.

There is also a preliminary conclusion that suggests being located in Colorado is correlated with extreme skill, but I think we'll need more data to confirm the association! ;-)

Stay tuned, I'll provided the skill table for the Premier League contest next week!

Points and Places

2011-12-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

OptaJoe tweets:

12 - The lowest any top-flight side has been at Christmas and still gone onto win the title is 12th (Liverpool 1981-82). Recovery.

But in 1981 Liverpool was only 9 points off first place (and yet 12th). Parity.

At Christmas 2011 there are only 2 teams within 9 points (Man U and Spurs). I have emailed the excellent Opta guys with a request for the record points-behind-at-Christmas. I will report back.

REPORTING BACK . . . From Opta:

The record is 13 points by Arsenal in 1997/98. Only two other teams (Liverpool 1981/82, 9 pts and Man Utd 95/96, 10 pts) have ever closed a gap of at least nine points, so it's looking like a two-horse race...

Thanks Opta!

A Miracle on Ice

2011-12-22T19:33:00.001-08:00

To warm your heart this Christmas season.

Where Does the Law of the Game End and the Law of the Land Begin?

2011-12-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports that Chelsea's John Terry is to be charged with a crime -- "a racially aggravated public order offence" -- with a trial soon to come, for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand of QPR in a match earlier this year. The English FA has suspended its own investigation of the matter pending the legal proceedings.

The situation will raise all sorts of jurisprudential questions. For instance, Liverpool's Luis Suarez has just been suspended for 8 games and fined 40,000 pounds for racially abusing Patrice Evra of Manchester United. The suspension resulted from a violation of the FA's internal rules governing the game and under the FA's extensive procedures for discipline (here in PDF).

The two cases will certainly raise questions of harmonization between the FA's rules and British law. Is it possible that the Suarez case represented a violation of FA rules but not British law? Is it possible that Terry violated British law but not the FA rules? Should the punishments in both cases be similar in both settings?

The order of the decisions is also important. Does the FA's decision on Suarez put any pressure on British authorities? Similarly, how will the FA respond to the decision rendered by the courts in the Terry case?

It seems that the FA's extensive rules for disciplinary conduct -- at least as far as I can see -- do not clearly address the relationship of Association sanctions for on-the-field violations in the context of legal sanctions for those same behaviors.

This issue is not easy to resolve and it is not going away. As one former US prosecutor explained, judging the legality of on-the-field actions is not simple:

"A punch in boxing will you get you a championship. A punch in hockey will get you cheers and the penalty box. A punch in basketball, you don’t see that. It's not supposed to happen. That's not even part of the game"

Where does the law of the game end and the law of the land begin? And what happens when they overlap?

European PGA Money Leaders in the PGA

2011-12-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Luke Donald's unprecedented finish at the top of the money list for the European PGA and the PGA tour had me wondering about how rare an event this feat is, and what might be expected for the future.

In the graph above, I show the PGA tour money list ranking of the player who finished first on the European PGA Tour (the data comes from here for EPGA and here for PGA). The data starts in 1994, because in 1993 the European PGA Tour money winner, Colin Montgomery, did not place in the PGA Tour rankings. It has often been the case over the recent decade that the top PGA Tour money winner did not place in the European PGA rankings, e.g., Tiger Woods.

What you see in the graph above is a trend -- hardly linear -- over the past 17 years of improved performance by the European PGA Tour money winner in the PGA, culminating with Luke Donald's unprecedented double.

In 1990s the European PGA was dominated by Colin Montgomery whose PGA successes were modest at best. The early 2000s saw Retief Goosen and Ernie Els, both of whom played golf globally. In 2004 Els almost achieved the double, with a first in Europe and third in the US. Recent years have seen the European PGA Tour money winner in the top 50 of the PGA.

What accounts for the trend? Probably money -- larger purses on both sides of the Atlantic and greater ease in accessing that money, as more and more top golfers find the logistics of travel less onerous than they once were (e.g., private jets), though tiring nonetheless.

Will we see another double? I suspect so, and I'd guess sooner rather than later.

Best Practices in Managing Conflict of Interest in Expert Advisory Processes

2011-12-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

I have received several comments and questions from readers (yes, there are readers!) related to my posts earlier this week on FIFA "Independent Good Governance Committee" and the issue of conflicts of interest. This post offers a bit of deeper background on the notion of conflict of interest and how it is managed in expert advisory processes (see also this post). For the excerpts below, I draw on a 2009 report that I helped to write for the Bipartisan Policy Center, which covered in some depth conflicts of interest in the empanelment of expert advisory committees.

The report -- Improving the Use of Science in Regulatory Policy (here in PDF) -- was prepared in support of the Obama Administration's efforts on "scientific integrity" which had taken a bit of a hit during the Bush Administration. The report discussed conflict of interest at length. Here are a few key points from that report extracted and placed into the form of a Q&A.

Why empanel an expert committee in the first place?

The primary purpose in appointing a committee is to gather a group of eminently qualified individuals who can have an open, engaged and comprehensive discussion of the issues before them.

What does a conflict of interest policy look like?

For conflict of interest, there must be a [clear] policy with bright lines that leaves as little doubt as possible as to who would be considered to have a conflict if they served on a particular advisory committee.

What is a conflict of interest anyway?

The US National Academy of Science uses this definition: “The term ‘conflict of interest’ means any financial or other interest which conflicts with the service of the individual because it (1) could significantly impair the individual’s objectivity or (2) could create an unfair competitive advantage for any person or organization….[Conflict] means something more than individual bias. There must be an interest, ordinarily financial, that could be directly affected by the work of the committee. Conflict of interest requirements are objective and prophylactic. They are not an assessment of one’s actual behavior or character…."

At the core of any effective COI policy is disclosure, what does that mean in practice?

Members of [expert] advisory committees should be required to disclose . . . information on relevant financial relationships and professional activities (such as giving talks at conferences and testifying in court) going back five years. Members should also be asked to disclose, to the best of their ability, any relevant professional activities that occurred more than five years prior to their committee service. Any reporting period is inherently arbitrary . . .

What information should be disclosed?

The US National Academy of Science provides a useful list: “employment relationships (including private and public sector employment and self-employment); consulting relationships (including commercial and professional consulting and service arrangements, . . . advisory board memberships and serving as an expert witness in litigation); stocks, bonds and other financial instruments and investments including partnerships; real estate investments; patents, copyrights and other intellectual property interests; commercial business ownership and investment interests; services provided in exchange for honorariums and travel expense reimbursements; research funding and other forms of research support.” Also, like the Academy, financial disclosure should cover not only the individual committee member, but “the individual’s spouse and minor children, the individual’s employer, the individual’s business partners, and others with whom the individual has substantial common financial interests…and the interests of those for whom one is acting in a fiduciary or similar capacity.”

Should those judged to have a conflict be allowed to serve on expert advisory committees?

The desired norm . . . should be to appoint advisory committees whose members are free of conflicts of interest. (Relevant experts who have conflicts could still make presentations to a panel.)

Can exceptions be made to this "general norm"?

There will be instances, though, when [experts] with conflicts of interest may be needed for a panel because of their expertise. . .

When a waiver is granted, the agency should publicly state that the appointee has a conflict and should provide enough information that the public and the other committee members understand what kinds of efforts were made to find a nonconflicted individual, how and why the appointed individual was considered to be conflicted, and why the individual was appointed nonetheless, as well as disclosing who signed off on the waiver.

How often should such a waiver be granted? What about the committee chair?

Agencies should not appoint anyone with a conflict to serve as the chair or co-chair of a committee. And agencies should limit the issuing of conflict waivers to ensure that individuals with conflicts do not generally constitute more than a small percentage of the membership of a committee.

The Obama Administration has not yet fully implemented our recommendations for federal expert advisory committees, leaving in place a mishmash of policies in different agencies. The recommendations of the BPC are nonetheless recommended as best practices in the mamangement of conflicts of interest.

FIFA may or may not wish to employ a conflict of interest policy to support the credibility and legitimacy of its expert advisory processes. However, when operating without a conflict of interest policy or flouting well understood conventions, FIFA should not be surprised to find its advisory process under scrutiny, challenged and even viewed as illegitimate or worse.

One point seems abundantly clear -- if "trust us, we're experts" does not work for leading scientists around the world, it is surely not going to work for an organization with a reputation (whether deserved or not) for shoddy governance and essentially no experience in soliciting independent expert advice.

The reputational risks in play here are not just for FIFA (whose reputation probably cannot get worse) or the FIFA"Independent Good Governance Committee" (which will be taken seriously or it won't), but also for the individuals on the committee, including its chair.

Disclosure Starts at Home

2011-12-19T15:40:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year FIFA asked the University of Basel's Mark Pieth (above with Sepp Blatter) to write a paper that would (here in PDF):

... analyse the existing [FIFA] governance structure, to express an opinion on its standard and, if necessary, to make Recommendations for its amendment.

This is not an investigation into past behaviour. The focus is exclusively on the institutional arrangements, the organisational structures and procedures and their ability to deal with existing risks and challenges. Transparency and accountability are the key goals of governance.

The 29 page report failed to disclose that the University of Basel was paid by FIFA the rather eyebrow-raising amount of $128,000 and more than $5,000 per day to produce the slim product. The report discusses "conflict of interest" throughout and notes that:

[C]onflicts cannot be “forbidden”; conflicts are a reason to notify and disclose the situation, and to recuse oneself in substantial cases.

It is thus all the more surprising that nowhere in the report (or anywhere else I can see) can one find disclosure of the exceedingly large payment from FIFA to the University of Basel. It was left to a Swiss newspaper to share this information.

While FIFA can pay anyone they want to produce a report, the instant that Pieth was selected to chair the FIFA "Independent Governance Committee" the payment -- at a minimum -- creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. The failure to disclose in these circumstances compounds the issue and violates fundamental notions of conflict of interest employed in business, governments and non-governmental organizations.

Why do conflict of interest guidelines matter? Not just because some blogger will highlight the incongruities. Violations of basic conflict of interest practices can lead to lost credibility and legitimacy. Consider this sage advice given to the United Nations in a prominent report in 2005 (p. 188, here in PDF):

In order to safeguard against conflict of interest situations, a robust financial disclosure and conflicts of interest regime should include a requirement that all United Nations staff and consultants, including "$1 dollar a year consultants," disclose in writing to the Ethics Office any financial interest or business relationship of his or her own or of immediate family members that could represent a conflict with his or her responsibilities or that could reflect unfavorably upon the integrity of the Organization.

An author of the report? Mark Pieth.

Independence Scorecard for FIFA's "Independent" Governance Committee

2011-12-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

[UPDATE #2 12/20: Two names have been added since this post was first written, updates noted below.]

[UPDATE: Jens Weinreich reposts the below at his blog and adds some additional information and commentary. Thanks Jens!]

FIFA has empaneled a committee focused on helping the organization to reform itself in the direction of "good governance." Sepp Blatter calls the committee the "Independent Good Governance Committee." However, media reports and readily available information shows that the committee is far from independent.

My scorecard shows, of the 12 announced spots on the committee:

2 are independent
4 are independent pending full disclosure of financial ties to FIFA
6 are not independent (including its chair)

Below are the members who have been announced for the committee and my judgement on their independence from FIFA and rationale. I add a ** to those judgments where further information would be helpful, but as FIFA operates without a conflict of interest policy that mandates disclosure of potential conflicts, information is hard to come by. I err on the side judging independence when information is lacking.

NOT INDEPENDENT -- Chair, Mark Pieth, University Of Basel -- Pieth (or Pieth's institution) was paid $128,000 by FIFA to produce a scoping report, immediately prior to being appointed to chair the committee. Obviously not independent.

INDEPENDENT -- Leonadro Grosso, FIFPro President-- FIFPro is an association of professional football player associations, formed in 1965.

NOT INDEPENDENT -- Lydia Nsekera, President Burundi Football Association -- The Burundi FA is a member of FIFA. Obviously not independent.

**INDEPENDENT -- Peter Goldsmith, former UK Attorny General and now partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, LLC-- There is some evidence that Debevoise & Plimpton may have financial ties to FIFA (e.g., in advising on a $250M infrastructure project associated with EURO 2012). Such a relationship may or may not compromise independence, I just don't know, hence the two stars.

INDEPENDENT -- Alexandra Wrage, President of TRACE -- TRACE states on its website: "Neither Ms. Wrage nor TRACE will accept any fees or travel expenses for Ms. Wrage's participation on the IGC."

**INDEPENDENT -- Michael Herschman, President of The FairFax Group --The FairFax group helps to advise companies about crisis managment and risk mitigation. It is not known what, if any, financial relationship the Group has had with FIFA now or in the recent past, hence the two stars.

**INDEPENDENT -- Guillermo Jorge, Guillermo Jorge & Asociados -- The firm specializes in "in the design and implementation of corporate strategies and public policies dealing with business ethics and the prevention of corruption and money laundering." Once again there is no information on the firm's current or past financial ties to FIFA, hence the two stars.

**INDEPENDENT -- James Klotz, partner at Miller Thomson LLC -- Miller Thomson is a business law firm, again there is no information available on the firms current or past relationships with FIFA. Two stars.

NOT INDEPENDENT -- François Morinière, CEO of Groupe L’Équipe - Groupe Amaury -- This corporate entity is a corporate partner with FIFA for its Ballon D'Or Award.

Others to be added include:

NOT INDEPENDENT -- Sunil Gulati, president US Soccer Federation -- USSF is a member of FIFA. Obviously not independent. [UPDATE 12/20: Gulati has been added to the formal list.]

NOT INDEPENDENT -- unnamed Asian sponsor

NOT INDEPENDENT -- an unnamed club representative [UPDATE 12/20: This slot has been filled by Carlos Heller, major shareholder in Universidad de Chile.]

If I was a reporter, I'd be asking the 6 members with two stars to disclose publicly their financial relationships with FIFA (or lack thereof). If they are unwilling to disclose such information to allow such a judgment, I'd move them to "not independent." But in this exercise I have erred on the side of judging independence of these organizations, but absent disclosure it is not at all clear that such a judgment is warranted.

The bottom line is that FIFA's "Independent Good Governance Committee" is far from independent.

FIFA Turns Advantage into Offense

2011-12-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

FIFA, fresh off legal victories of FC Sion at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and in an appeal in the Swiss judicial system, has now gone on the offensive:

FIFA have threatened to expel Switzerland from football if they fail to enforce a transfer ban on Sion by January 13.

The Swiss club were put under a transfer embargo over the signing of Egyptian goalkeeper Essam El Hadary, but proceeded to sign six players in the summer.

Sion then fielded five of the six players during the Europa League play-off tie against Celtic earlier this year and were kicked out of the competition as a result, with UEFA's decision to expel them upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier this week.

FIFA have now ordered the Swiss Football Association to sanction Sion or risk Switzerland being excluded from all football - which would mean Basel missing out on taking part in the Champions League last 16 and the national team missing out on an encounter with Argentina in February.

The FIFA offensive apparently represents a turnabout of perspective:

In September Fifa president Sepp Blatter gave an assurance that the Swiss national team would not be affected by the Sion affair “whatever happens”.

There is also a twist:

Manchester United could see their Champions League place restored after Fifa warned the Swiss FA that their domestic sides could be banned from European competition following the row over Sion's Europa League participation.

Basel, who qualified ahead of United, could face expulsion from the competition if the Swiss FA do not follow Fifa's instructions in relation to a ban imposed on Sion by the January 13.

If Basel are disqualified, one option would see Sir Alex Ferguson's side return to the tournament, however it is also possible that the Swiss side's last-16 opponents, Bayern Munich, could be given a bye.

The next chapter in this saga will be written on January 11th when a Swiss court hears whether FC Sion should be reinstated into the Europa League:

“Sion will wait for another decision from the Civil Court of Vaud on January 11 against the two forfeits of the games Celtic v Sion and Sion v Celtic, with a view to reintegrating the club in the last 32 [of the Europa League]”

FIFA's raising of the stakes puts more pressure on FC Sion to drop the case should they lose this case, but they may choose to go the distance -- all the way to the ECJ.

FC Sion Update: Next Stop Swiss Federal Court

2011-12-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

In an expected outcome the Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled in favor of UEFA in their ongoing legal battle with FC Sion. The BBC reports:

The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Uefa's decision to expel the Swiss club from of the competition for fielding ineligible players.

Five such players were fielded in Sion's two-legged play-off win against with Celtic, who were reinstated in the competition after making a complaint.

Sion have also been ordered to pay Uefa 40,000 Swiss Francs for the governing body's legal costs.

However, the Swiss club intend to challenge the verdict and have 30 days to respond officially.

The CAS verdict of course does not end the legal battle, which looks to be taken all the way to the top of the European Justice System:

In response to the CAS ruling, a Sion spokesman said: "The verdict makes stronger our feeling of the servility of the CAS to the powerful football authorities. It confirms our belief that now it becomes urgent to change the functioning of that court, which ultimately is not one.

"We are now taking the case in front of Swiss Federal Court (the CAS recognises its authority), and then the European Court."

This one is going to take a while to resolve -- much longer than it will to resolve this year's on-field Europa Cup competition.

What to Do About College Sports?

2011-12-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a special feature on college sports with a round up of views. Here are some excerpts.

Oscar Robertson:

Today there is a tremendous disparity in how the NCAA treats its student athletes and the way it treats its member institutions. Student-athletes are treated like gladiators—revered by fans and coveted by member institutions for their ability to produce revenue, but ultimately viewed as disposable commodities.

Frank Deford:

Athletic scholarships should be discontinued—except for the football and basketball players who desire them. The players in the two "revenue sports" would officially be school employees and only, at their option, students. They would have four years of athletic eligibility. Whether or not they wish to attend class and work toward a degree would be their choice.

William C. Friday

There is much that must be changed, but a place to begin now would be to make the operations of this entertainment colossus more transparent. A good start would be to require each institution to issue annually a comprehensive report on its intercollegiate sports programs. This report would go far beyond the won-lost column.

C. Thomas McMillen

Congress must force the issue. It has intervened in this way before, when, with the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, it granted the U.S. Olympic Committee a monopoly—so there is precedent. I would like to see legislation—with provisions for mandatory reforms—enacted to reinstate for five years the antitrust exemption the NCAA had before a Supreme Court decision overturned it, in 1984.

Harry Edwards

Aggressively soliciting and expanding corporate sponsorship of collegiate athletics would allow colleges to be both right and honest, while enjoying a sustainable flow of revenue without overburdening the general fund. . . Big-time collegiate football and basketball programs must share the wealth with the athletes who produce the wealth.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar

Congress should pass a narrow antitrust exemption that would allow the NCAA to control athletic-program costs and television revenues. Only Congress can override the Supreme Court's 1984 decision that the NCAA could not require its members to participate in its television plan . . . The NCAA and conferences should replace win-loss records as a determining factor in revenue distribution with demonstrated educational values.

Richard H. Thaler

If I could change one thing about the college-sports scene, it would be to end the Bowl Championship Series. The BCS system is a relic of ancient history and is now one of the reasons that there is a continuing battle among conferences.

Len Elmore

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has the potential to be a central and powerful regulatory body that can offer real reform, but antitrust restrictions prevent it from regulating all aspects of intercollegiate sports—including financial ones. Therefore, to create a strong and authoritative regulatory body that protects the interests of the games and the people who play them, the NCAA must be exempt from antitrust laws.

Financial Fair Play Comes to the NCAA

2011-12-09T03:26:00.001-08:00

[UPDATE: The new proposals are not so popular. Go figure.]

The Chronicle of Higher Education has obtained a document from the NCAA's Resource Allocation Working Group (here in PDF) which has recommended that the NCAA reduce the number of competitions, eliminate foreign tours by athletic teams, reduce the number of allowed athletic scholarships and reduce the size of coaching staffs. If effect, the recommendations seek to halt some aspects of the professionalization of college athletics.

Here are the rationales for the four recommendations offered in the memo:

On reducing the number of compeitions:

It is important for the student-athlete to have the appropriate number of competitions in place that allow them to be successful as athletes, while maximizing the time available for academic success and campus life pursuits.

On reducing the number of scholarships:

The proposed scholarship numbers allow for continued success of football and women’s basketball programs while providing institutions with the opportunity to reallocate dollars to other initiatives that benefit student-athletes. The proposed scholarship reductions also will allow for athletics talent to be dispersed across more intercollegiate athletics programs.

On eliminating foreign tours by athletic teams:

Institutions feel a growing pressure to provide a foreign tour opportunity to each student-athlete. As a result, providing a foreign tour has become tied to the recruiting process. Student-athletes are encouraged to use institutional study abroad programs that are available during these time periods.

On reducing the size of coaching staffs:

The membership and the Board of Directors have expressed significant concern with the proliferation of non-coaching staff members with sport-specific responsibilities. Dollars spent on these personnel can be allocated to areas that will more directly benefit the student-athlete and better align with enduring values.

Call me a cynic, but I'd guess that these recommendations have about as much chance of being implemented as the University of Colorado does in winning this year's college football national championship.

Cost of a Loss

2011-12-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

Both Manchester United and Manchester City failed to reach the group stage of the Champions League. Stefan Szymanski estimates the hit to the Man U revenue at more than $50 million, while AndersRed comes in at about half that amount (presumably Man City's loss is in the neighborhood as well). Either way it is a chunk of change.

Szymanski has a solution:

But maybe there are more creative ways around this. How about “the Manchester Masters”- a series of seven games played to determine bragging rights in Greater Manchester? That would fill in all those empty midweek slots in 2012.

On Second Thought

2011-12-08T04:54:00.001-08:00

Mark Pieth, the University of Basel professor hired by FIFA to lead its "good governance" committee, has changed his mind following Transparency International's break-up with FIFA:

The anti-corruption expert FIFA appointed to advise Sepp Blatter on cleaning up world soccer’s governing body says he will address previous allegations of wrongdoing.

Responding to attacks on his integrity, Mark Pieth says looking at FIFA’s past is “necessary” to understand the “risk scenarios.”

The Basel University professor says his Independent Governance Committee has “absolutely no objection to an investigation."

What might this mean?

Mark Pieth, told Associated Press that he will focus on FIFA;s past as well as its future. Mr. Pieth said he has “absolutely no objection to an investigation” and would soon interview investigative journalists who are “experts on FIFA’s past.” Mr. Pieth is believed to have been referring to muckracking reporters Andrew Jennings and Jens Weinreich, who have long documented allegations of corruption in FIFA and were this year awarded for their reporting by Play the Game, a group that advocates transparency in sports. Both men have been banned by FIFA.

One observer goes so far as to suggest that the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid is now subject to investigation. The problem with looking into the past is that it may take you to unexpected and uncomfortable places.

Govern Yourselves Well or else We'll do it for You

2011-12-07T02:23:00.001-08:00

Last week the Council of the European Union met in Brussels and the governance of sport was a topic on the agenda. The EU Commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, made this interesting comment:

Good governance is an essential condition for the recognition of the autonomy of sport. This involves key pillars which must be respected by sports federations, such as democracy, transparency, accountability and inclusive representation of all interested parties in the decision-making process.

Sport is allowed to largely govern itself at the discretion of governments. Autonomy is thus conditional. We are presently in the midst of a trend toward reduced autonomy for sport as the social contract between sport and governments is being strained, due to issues "such as democracy, transparency, accountability and inclusive representation."

Last year, the Council of Europe published a monograph which surveyed the notion of autonomy of sport in Europe (here in PDF) by Jean-Loup Chappelet. The growing tensions between sports governance and governments, which have occurred over the past several decades, marks a departure from historical relationships, Chappelet notes:

In Europe, as from the end of the 19th century, the bodies responsible for the codification of sports rules and the organisation of competitions generally took the form of non-profit-making associations. In this capacity, thanks to national legislation guaranteeing freedom of association, they enjoyed considerable autonomy from government in most European countries. It can even be said that, for most of the 20th century, the majority of European states allowed sports organisations to develop as bodies fully independent of the public authorities. For many years, clubs, regional and national federations and European or international federations, not to mention national Olympic committees (NOCs) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), operated in virtually complete independence of local and national government and were self-regulating, while sport itself was becoming an increasingly important sociocultural and economic sector.

Conflicts involving sports governance are certainly not unique to Europe, as recent concerns about the NCAA illustrate in the United States.

For non-governmental sports organizations, the pattern here should be now clear -- govern yourself well, or else governments will step in and do it for you.

Joao Havelange Resigns from the IOC

2011-12-05T13:02:00.001-08:00

The AP reports that Joao Havelange (above left, with FIFA's Sepp Blatter), the 95 year-old giant of international sport has resigned from the International Olympic Committee after more than 48 years of service, on the eve of an ethics report and possible suspension.

After nearly a half century in the Olympics, former FIFA President Joao Havelange has left the IOC under a cloud of corruption allegations.

The 95-year-old Brazilian’s resignation from the IOC was confirmed by the Olympic body and FIFA on Monday, three days before he faced possible suspension for allegedly taking kickbacks as president of FIFA.

Havelange's resignation ends the IOC investigation, which shows a serious weakness in the organization's governance mechanisms as it allows ethical lapses to be swept under the rug and never fully resolved in a public manner.

FIFA and TI: An Inevitable Divorce

2011-12-02T08:20:00.001-08:00

Well, it was inevitable. Transparency International has dramatically severed its relationship with FIFA. As it seeks to develop practices of 'good governance" FIFA has leaned heavily on TI for advice and credibiltiy, while repeated ignoring key recommendations on reform from TI. Sylvia Schenk, who was to be TI's representative on the FIFA "good governance committee," has stated that TI will not be participating in the reform process, prompting a very public and acrimonious break-up.

The BBC reports:

A corruption watchdog that was advising Fifa after a series of bribery and corruption scandals, has cut its ties with world football's governing body.

An official with Transparency International (TI) said two of its key recommendations had been ignored.

TI said Fifa paying an expert to oversee major reforms to how it is run would jeopardise his independence.

The expert, Mark Pieth, said he would not re-examine old scandals, another recommendation of TI.
The move is being viewed by many as a blow to the credibility of Fifa's reform process, which has been led by its President Sepp Blatter, says BBC sports news correspondent Alex Capstick.

Fifa has declined to comment on TI's move.

The precipitating move, certainly the final straw in a series, was the appointment of Pieth as chair of the "good governance committee." Pieth has a fundamental conflict of interest in the job, due to being on the FIFA payroll as a consultant. Bloomberg reports:

Sylvia Schenk, senior adviser for sport, said theorganization turned down an invitation to join FIFA’s outsidegovernance committee because its chairman Mark Pieth is beingpaid by the soccer body and also after Pieth said he wouldn’t belooking at allegations of past wrongdoing.

“All members of the commission are supposed to beindependent,” Schenk said in a telephone interview. “You can’tbe independent if you have a contract with FIFA.”

Schenck's point is so obvious that it is remarkable that it has to be made. Pieth defends his compensated role as being common practice for businesses who hire consultants to evaluate their business practices. But this is no consulting job.

Pieth's comments suggest that both he and FIFA are utterly unaware of the role of the committee or the depth of FIFA's troubles. The "good governance committee" is not in place to evaluate FIFA's business practices, but rather to investigate corruption in the organization and set a road map for good governance into the future. As such, the credibility and legitimacy of the committee are precious resources, now squandered. When FIFA says that the committee is to be "independent" it makes a mockery of the process by hiring a chairperson.

To get a sense of FIFA's blunder, imagine the reaction if BP had hired the chair of an "independent" investigation into the Gulf oil spill or if Bank of America had hired the chair of the Congressional investigation of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Such a relationship is laughable in those cases, as it is with FIFA hiring its own "independent" chair.

Transparency International has the stellar reputation that it does because it not only understands good governance, but it practices what it preaches. FIFA does neither. Always questionable, FIFA's "reform" effort now stands completely discredited. Kudos to TI for doing the right thing.

Where does FIFA go from here?

Maryland's Tough Decision

2011-11-30T05:53:00.001-08:00

The University of Maryland, finding itself in a long-term structural deficit due to its athletic programs, has decided to cut 8 of 27 varsity sports. The Washington Post reports:

Calling Monday a “day of enormous sadness,” University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh accepted the recommendation of his athletics commission to cut eight of the school’s 27 varsity sports programs in an effort to tackle the athletic department’s multimillion dollar deficit...

Loh said the current business model in college sports, where schools rely on two revenue-producing sports (football and men’s basketball) as well as lucrative television contracts associated with those sports, is “inequitable and unsustainable.” Loh pledged to continue to work with the ACC, NCAA and other national organizations to address what he called the escalating financial arms race in college sports.

The cuts follow a report produced by a commission established by Loh to assess the deficit and recommend actions in response. The report, which can be found here in PDF, has relevance much beyond the University of Maryland.

The report surveys the newly-constituted Atlantic Coast Conference which has the participation of 14 schools. The report provides these eye-popping numbers.

First, total athletic department expenditures:

1. Florida State University $75 million
2. University of Miami $51 million
3. Clemson $56 million
4. Duke $68 million
5. Wake Forest $41 million
6. Georgia Tech $47 million
7. Boston College $63 million
8. University of Virginia $71 million
9. University of Pittsburgh $49 million
10. UNC $67 million
11. Virginia Tech $50 million
12. NC State $47 million
13. University of Maryland $51 million
14. Syracuse University $49 million

These expenditures result in an "investment per student athlete" (FY 13) of $129,000 per yer at FSU to a low of $68,000 at Syracuse, which no doubt masks large differences across different sports. By cutting 8 sports, Maryland's per athlete investment will jump from $57,000 in FY 10 to $108,000 in FY 13.

The Maryland report provides further details on a system that is fundamentally broken and unsustainable.

Stefan Szymanski Joins the Blogosphere

2011-11-30T05:45:00.001-08:00

At Forbes, Stefan Szymanski has a new blog .. Sporty Business ... check it out. Stefan is of course the co-author (with Simon Kuper) of Soccernomics.

You can see Stefan above, recently discussing the increasing role of US owners in the EPL. Recently Stefan moved from London to the University of Michigan.

What Explains Parity in European Football?

2011-11-28T12:56:00.001-08:00

Writing in the WSJ Jonathan Clegg and Matthew Futterman offer up a theory to explain why it is that the top football leagues in Germany, England, France and Italy show so much parity this year, whereas Spain does not. I find their theory lacking.

Here is the core of their argument:

This year, however, just seven points separate seventh-place Arsenal from second-place Manchester United in the English Premier League. The last time things were this close at this stage in that league was during the 2001-02 season. In Italy, the No. 15 team, Cagliari, is just nine points behind first -place Juventus. The Serie A standings haven't been this bunched up through 11 games since the 1999-00 season, when eight points separated the top 13 teams. Poor Internazionale, the world club champion in 2010, is 16th with 11 points. In France, six teams are within eight points of the top and traditional powers Lyon and Marseille, stuck in fifth and 10th place respectively, are trying to hold off upstarts like Lorient and Caen.

All this has produced some spectacular benefits for soccer fans: a frenzied competition for supremacy up and down the table every week—and also for a coveted spots in the Champions League.

As fans soak up the spectacle, it's unlikely any of them will raise a pint in thanks to the two Spanish superpowers, Barcelona and Real Madrid, who have made headlines of late for spending money like Gilded Age industrialists in a bid to hoard most of the world's elite talent. After all, Spain's piggishness in luring away mega-stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fabregas, Javier Mascherano and Alexis Sanchez has been widely described as a potential apocalypse for club soccer.

As it turns out, that's not exactly true. By hoarding all the top players, Spain's dual powers might actually be doing Spanish fans a disservice (by discouraging competition) and the rest of Europe a favor (by making its leagues more balanced).

What have Barcelona and Real Madrid done? They have secured the services of 10 of the top 20 players in the world, according to the Castrol rankings. Impressive, no doubt, but hardly enough to explain parity across dozens of teams in four other leagues.

It is certainly true that there is a lack of parity in the Spanish league, and it indeed results from more talent present in the top two squads compared to everyone else. But this feature of La Liga has nothing to do with the parity found elsewhere.

To explain why there is parity elsewhere in Europe we need only look to how television monies are distributed within each league. According to The Swiss Ramble:

[W]ith the exception of La Liga, every major league distributes a good proportion of the TV funds equally, either explicitly or via the weighting of the allocation. However, the Premier League distributes more money this way than any other league, mainly due to the surge in overseas rights.

The result is that the ratio from top to bottom earning clubs in terms of TV payments is much smaller in the Premier League at 1.5, especially compared to La Liga where it is 12.5. So, last season Manchester United received £60 million, while Blackpool got £39 million. In contrast, Barcelona and Real Madrid received around £123 million, while Malaga had to make do with £10 million.

That’s bad enough, but the real issue in Spain is that the drop starts immediately with third placed Valencia only receiving £37 million, so the big two earn at least three times as much TV money as their closest challengers. Every other league is more equitable with the top team earning between 1.1 and 1.2 times as much as the third highest earner.

Spending on players is closely correlated with team performance, as indicated by this graph from UEFA (PDF):

It isn't Spain's revenue allocation policies that are benefiting the other big leagues in Europe. Rather, it is their own policies which serve to level the playing field to a much greater degree. If parity is indeed a desired characteristic of league play, then such comparative experience will be well worth noting.

What Does College Sports Conference Realignment Mean?

2011-11-24T22:21:00.001-08:00

The New York Times Room for Debate has done a round-up of views -- including mine -- on the significance of realignment among college football conference associations. I start my piece as follows:

Big-time college athletics are coming into conflict with another great American tradition – making money.

Have a look, comments welcomed!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-21T09:23:00.001-08:00

Hello Old Friend

2011-11-17T01:48:00.001-08:00

The Swiss Ramble on EPL TV Rights

2011-11-17T00:42:00.001-08:00

Last month The Swiss Ramble had a nice analytical piece on the distribution of TV money in the English Premier League. Here is an excerpt:

[T]he Premier League’s TV rights deal is the envy of other leagues. At £1.1 billion a year, it is well ahead of the rest with only Serie A (£0.9 billion) coming close. Incredibly, the deal is twice as much as La Liga (£0.5 billion) and three times as much as the Bundesliga (£0.4 billion). The principal reason for the disparity is the overseas rights, which are worth nearly £0.5 billion in England, but are negligible everywhere else. This helps explain why English clubs are increasingly focused on this element of the deal.

This argument is further supported by looking at how other major leagues distribute their TV income. In England the current deal works out at 67% of the revenue being allocated by means of an equal share with 17% based on on-pitch performance and the same amount on popularity, defined as the facility fee for number of times a club is broadcast live. No other league distributes as anywhere near as much via an equal share.

The full post is here.

Branch vs. Davis: Part II

2011-11-14T22:22:00.001-08:00

At The Atlantic, Taylor Branch and Seth Davis mix it up again over the NCAA. Part I is here.

Davis:

[W]hether you like it or not, college athletes are in fact amateurs.

Branch:

By excluding players from basic rights, the NCAA concentrates power unchecked in college athletic departments.

As Davis is on the payroll of CBS Sports, which receives billions of dollars from the NCAA, I can't help but think that the debate would be much improved if Branch's main protagonist was someone without such a direct financial interest. Surely there are independent academics or analysts out there willing to defend the NCAA? Anyone?

Penn State

2011-11-12T01:48:00.001-08:00

Even if you live outside of the US, it is likely that you've heard of the shocking allegations out of Penn State University over the past week. A grand jury has charged that former Penn State coach, Jerry Sandusky, who ran a football charity for young boys, sexually assaulted many boys over years. Such criminal acts were witnessed by officials in the PSU football program and shared with the University administration, and no one -- no one -- from the witnesses in the football program to the head coach to the University president took responsible action, allowing the abuse to continue.

This is not a scandal about college football, per se, or college athletics. Those calling for the end of college sports miss the mark -- we would not call for the end of universities if such crimes happened in a laboratory.

First and foremost the Penn State scandal is about an institution that lost its way, lost its morals, lost its sense of responsibility and accountability. Sure, the fact that a college football program was involved with a very powerful coach is a central part of the context -- and reinforces the case for athletic program reform. Athletic programs certainly do have too much power, too much independence and are treated with too much deference. Hopefully, the Penn State scandal will motivate other campuses to improve their governance, not just of football and athletics, but more broadly.

Penn State may have violated federal law, may see its debt downgraded, people have lost their jobs, others may go to prison, lawsuits will surely be filed and the NCAA has suggested sanctions. Such responses are entirely appropriate and Penn State officials and employees are the ones responsible for this outcome which began with one sick individual.

But it is not just Penn State who should answer questions. What about the media, which had initially reported on these allegations six months ago! Did they do their job? What about other campuses? Miami, Ohio State, even my own campus Colorado, have faced difficult situations in recent years. Is there enough data now to suggest that university governance, including and especially that related to intercollegiate sports, needs a make over?

The Penn State reverberations may be long-lasting. My worry is that they might not be.

Democracy Not in Action

2011-11-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

FIFA has chutzpah, you have to give them that:

Brazil must hurry up and pass a package of new laws if the 2014 World Cup is to go ahead, FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke told the country's Congress on Tuesday, adding there was "not a day to lose."

"Either we do (the Cup) together or we will never manage it," said Valcke, pointing out that Brazil had first been asked to pass the legislation in 2007 when it was awarded the right to host the tournament.

Brazil's Congress must agree to implement a number of special rules in the so-called World Cup law, covering matters ranging from the price of tickets to penalties for selling pirate merchandise and the sale of alcohol in stadiums.

Some of these over-ride local laws, which has stirred up nationalistic sentiment in a country intensely proud of its soccer tradition and its recent economic progress.

Some Congressmen have already dug in their heels, threatening to delay the bill's approval and adding to concerns over Brazil's lagging preparations for the global showpiece.

Former Brazil striker Romario, himself now a Congressman, is one of the most outspoken critics, saying the law would trample on the country's sovereignty.

What is at stake? Just $1 billion and the World Cup itself:

There are several parts of the law that some Brazilian lawmakers wish to change. The most contentious issue involves half price tickets for students and senior citizens; FIFA calculates that these discounts would amount to a $100 million loss for the organization. Discounted tickets for students and seniors are guaranteed by Brazilian law, but FIFA proposed an alternative: setting aside 10 percent of all sales for $25 tickets. These tickets would be sold exclusively to Brazilians, but of any age. FIFA also maintained its demand to sell alcoholic beverages in stadiums (Budweiser is one of FIFA’s biggest sponsors). Alcohol is prohibited in Brazilian stadiums due to concerns over violence and illegal sales to minors, but it’s likely Congress will concede on this point. Since piracy is an ongoing problem in Brazil, FIFA has mandated a change to the penal code to increase jail time for pirating FIFA products and illegal transmission of games. The likely compromise will be to increase piracy prevention, but not to change the penal code. Finally, Brazilian legislators are under the impression FIFA wants to create special temporary courts to try cases involving the event and FIFA brand. If Brazil allows the temporary courts, they would be run by Brazilian magistrates with support from the attorney general’s office. However, FIFA denies this particular demand, claiming it was a unique situation in South Africa, due to the inability of local courts to handle FIFA cases.

Though Rousseff supposedly worked out an agreement with FIFA in October, Valcke’s visit indicates an uphill battle in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. Brazil has always been sensitive to sovereignty issues and is also eager to flex its muscles as an emerging world power. But FIFA is keen to protect its business interests. According to VEJA, FIFA could lose up to $1 billion if Brazil refuses to meet its requirements.

Brazil is under considerable pressure to pass the World Cup law, though it may not be approved until next year. A clause in the original FIFA agreement would allow the World Cup to be removed from Brazil as early as next year, should the law fail to pass or should FIFA decide Brazil is in violation of its agreement.

Sometimes it seems that FIFA officials think that the organizations demands trump national laws. Here is FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke:

"It can’t be seen as a national event, it can’t be seen as a purely Brazilian event, and it can’t be seen as an event controlled by a single country. The World Cup is organized by FIFA for the rest of the world.”

If I was Romario that would get my dander up too.

Then and Now: Qatar Edition

2011-11-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

Then:

FIFA's inspection team will be shown a prototype climate-controlled stadium on Tuesday during the first stop on a three-day visit to evaluate Qatar's chances of hosting the 2022 World Cup.
The team, making their ninth and last visit to biddingcountries, will consider the possibility of bringing the finalsto the Middle East for the first time.

Bid chairman Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, amember of the Qatari royal family, said in an opening address . . .

"We have been honest about our cooling technology system. Itis now zero carbon and we have already proved the technologydoes work and we can cool stadiums and we are now proving we cando it in an environmentally friendly way."

Sheikh Mohammed said the hot weather was a challenge Qatarhad to overcome.

"We will tackle it head on, our technology works and will bevery successful," he added.

Doha already has six state-of-the-art stadiums and morewould be built in time for the finals.

The prototype stadium the delegates from FIFA, football'sgoverning body, were being shown on Tuesday has a zero carbonfootprint and will be the system used at every venue.

Now:

After all the talk of using state-of-the-art air conditioningto cool stadiums at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the architect in charge of oneof the venues reversed course and claimed Tuesday that a more old-fashionedsolution would be cheaper and better.

Leading firm Populous, which is designing the Sports City stadium in Doha,is trying to persuade Qatari organizers to scrap plans to have air conditioningat the venue.

Populous director John Barrow said the system is too expensive and“notoriously unsustainable” for the environment when used on a large scale.Barrow, whose firm helped draw up the prototype of an air-conditioned stadium,now believes the planned 47,000-seat Sports City arena can be kept cool byshading seats and using traditional Arabic methods for ventilation.

“I think you can be more clever. It is about air movement, moisture in theair and it is about temperature at the right time of day,” Barrow tolddelegates at the International Football Arena conference. “If we get it right… that is the way ahead.”

The concept of air-conditioned stadiums to beat the 122-degree desert heatin June was a defining theme of Qatar’s winning bid last year.

Qatar hired Populous to help its campaign, drawing on the firm’s experiencein building signature projects such as the new Yankee Stadium, London’s 2012Olympic Stadium and Arsenal’s Emirates arena.

The firm built a small prototype of an air-conditioned stadium in Doha tohelp persuade a FIFA inspection team that the tiny nation’s ambitious World Cupproject could succeed.

“We are doing away with all the air-conditioning kit that is going to costa fortune to run,” Barrow said.

Instead, he is proposing wind towers that suck up hot air to create fan-likeair movement inside the stadium.

“It is part of the building tradition in the Gulf to create wind towers,which naturally ventilate. If you have got an air movement, which keeps you coollike a fan, that makes all the difference.”

Qatar promised FIFA that its 12 World Cup stadiums could be regulated ataround 79 degrees. Now, Barrow says spectators could be sitting in 86-degreetemperatures during evening matches.

“Fan expectation needs to be a little more relaxed,” he said on theconference sideline.

Using Sport to Teach Statistics

2011-11-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

The NYT has a neat article on college professors who use sport as a basis for teaching statistics. here is an excerpt:

While traditional what-if situations involving dice rolls and poker hands remain a staple, sports offers dozens of real-life games every day that generate scads of data begging to be examined. Flipping a coin twice is a mundane thought experiment; having Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns attempt two free throws with a game on the line is like watching ESPN in the classroom.

One student says:

“It’s a major reason I’m here in the class at all,” said Micah Barbour, a freshman planning to major in political science. “I love sports and sports is all about statistics. I’ve never had an opportunity where a class can take something and make it so real-life. It’s cool to finally have fun in math.”

I may have to develop such a class myself!

You can take a quiz to test your statistical knowledge here.

Are "Student-Athletes" Employees?

2011-11-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

McCormick and McCormick (2005, PDF) say, yes, obviously:

Abstract: Grant-in-aid athletes in revenue-generating sports at Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) institutions are not “student-athletes” as the NCAA asserts, but are, instead, “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To be an employee under that Act, these athletes must meet both the common law test and a statutory test applicable to university students. In applying the common law test to athletes, we describe their daily lives through interviews with current and former Division I grant-in aid athletes. These interviews demonstrate that their daily burdens and obligations not only meet the legal standard of employee, but far exceed the burdens and obligations of most university employees. In addressing the statutory definition of the term employee, we demonstrate that the relationship between these athletes and their universities is not primarily academic, but is, instead, undeniably commercial. As employees under the NLRA, these athletes are entitled “to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Consequently, they will be able to acquire bargaining power through collective association and to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment, including wages not arbitrarily limited to the level of athletic scholarships.

This hard-hitting paper concludes:

To call NCAA Division I athletes in revenue-generating sports amateurs is farcical. The NCAA’s droning insistence on labeling them student-athletes” is done simply to shore up the fiction that they are something other than employees. NCAA rules, promulgated by the university-employers themselves, bar these athletes from earning compensation representing their true worth. Unaware of their market value, constrained by NCAA strictures, and raised in the myth of the student-athlete, they enter into servitude by the thousands every year. Thus, this fiction has worked to convince even the players themselves to bask in the bright, but brief, glow of their status as campus heroes, and has nurtured their unrealistic dreams of glory, obscuring the reality of their exploitation.

The power of myth is undeniable.406 It has served the economic interests of the NCAA and many other participants in major college sports richly. But the power of the law is also great, and a society that respects the law looks through the myth and the propaganda to facts. The rule of law eschews a “tyranny of labels”407 and seeks truth. And the truth is that these athletes are employees under the law.

I agree.

Andrew Jennings Visits the Brazilian Senate

2011-11-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Jens Weinreich has the full text and images from Andrew Jennings (pictured above at PTG 2011) recent testimony before the Education, Culture and Sports Committee of the Brazilian Senate. Play the Game has a nice summary here.

Here is how Jennings begins, and you should read the whole testimony:

Good morning. Thank you for your invitation.

I have been an investigative reporter for 45 years. I research and acquire confidential documents.

Then I write books and articles and make investigation films for the BBC.

I have been investigating FIFA for 10 years.

I have considerable experience in investigating organised crime and I can assure you that FIFA ticks all the boxes in the academic definition of an Organised Crime Family.

Today I want to tell you about the latest corruption crisis at FIFA and how it will impact on the 2014 World Cup.

But first – Meet some of the members of FIFA’s 23-man Executive Committee.

Jennings has some pretty remarkable material. Here is a Brazilian new report on Jennings' testimony.

FIFA to Investigate Makudi

2011-11-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

FIFA has announced that it will open an investigation of Worawi Makudi, chairman of the Football Association of Thailand (I first discussed Makudi here). From the BBC:

FiFifa says Thai football boss Worawi Makudi will face a formal investigation by its ethics committee unless he provides proof by 1 December he did not misuse $860,000 (£535,000) of football development funding.

Thailand FA president and Fifa executive committee member Makudi is accused of using money for football projects on land that he personally owns, an allegation he denies. . .

Makudi would be the sixth senior Fifa executive to face an ethics hearing since October 2010 if he is unable to provide Fifa with the information it has demanded. It is understood he would face charges in connection with a possible breach of section five of the organisation's code of ethics.

Section Five is the slim part on "conflicts of interest" that I highlighted earlier this week, and it is presently getting quite a workout. At what point does FIFA need to take action with respect to its Executive Committee?

With six members facing formal investigations and numerous others accused of corruption, does the Committee loose its legitimacy at some point? Has it already? Can it oversee Seep Blatter's reform process? I suppose that we shall soon learn the answers to the questions, simply as a practical matter.

UK Parliament: FIFA Should be Investigated

2011-11-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK Parliament has called for a full investigation of FIFA's governance, particularly as related to Lord Treisman's allegations earlier this year:

. . . the committee is still concerned that no apparent effort was made by FIFA to investigate these allegations when they were put to it, and that other allegations - specifically those made by Lord Triesman in evidence to the committee - remain.

Since it was Lord Treisman who levied the allegations, then how about the UK Parliament opening an investigation? Recommendations offered in the passive voice usually don't get too far.

Lord Triesman's testimony from last May can be found below.

ESPN and College Football Realignment

2011-11-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

USA Today asks some uncomfortable questions:

For all that ESPN has lent to the growth of major-college athletics — through on-air exposure and with rights-fees payouts that schools have fed into stadium improvements, luxurious locker rooms and huge contracts for top coaches — there's an undercurrent of concern about the influence of the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports.

It's not just that its tentacles are everywhere: They're everywhere at once.

As a TV rights holder, ESPN is a business partner to a wide array of conferences and schools (its total college outlay will average more than $700 million annually by next year).

And as a leading broadcast, print and online news outlet, ESPN also reports the news it's often a party to making.

"We've created … I was going to say a blurry line, but I don't think there is any line anymore as to who's in charge," says Andy Geiger, a former athletics director at Ohio State University.

"We're doing business with an entertainment company whose only way of surviving involves the number of eyeballs watching the screen," he says. "That is the driving force in what I see as all the decisions being made."

Realignment is here to stay:

Others see it differently. UConn President Susan Herbst, on the landscape a few weeks ago: "One of the things I think we're all resigned to is that regionalism is pretty much over. In terms of stability and finding the best institutions that fit, that you want to play, you have to go pretty far beyond where you ever thought. And that's OK. I think most of us are settled with it. Football, it's a little easier because you only go to a far away place every other year and they come to you every other year. … The world is flat. I think we've all come to see that college athletics is like telecommunications or political organizing or any of the kind of dynamic institutions that used to be very regional. It's a national activity."

NCAA President Mark Emmert said last month of the variety of plans being discussed, "These are all living social science experiments."

A social science experiment, one might add, heavily focused on economics.

A Great Opportunity for FIFA to Display its New Approach to Transparency

2011-10-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

Writing at the Sunday Guardian Jesse Fink says:

Now here's something. While FIFA swells its chest and promises the world it's changing its ways with a raft of new reforms carrying the imprimatur of Transparency International, it sells the Asian TV rights to a company run by Philippe Blatter, the nephew of FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Fink suggests that transparency might help, and suggests some of the information that FIFA should make public:

So what made Infront the winning bid for Asia? Will we ever know? Will FIFA release the tender documents that substantiate Ericson's claim that it was the "best package"?

It's a perfect opportunity for FIFA to show just how transparent it is but don't hold your breath.

Transparency International must be feeling the sting of having FIFA invoke its good name in support of its actions. The BBC reports that TI also sees the Infront deal as not particularly consistent with good governance and has also called for greater openness with information:

Fifa announced yesterday it had appointed Infront Sports and Media to handle the sale of World Cup TV rights in a number of Asian countries for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.

But they failed to disclose the president of Infront is Philippe Blatter, the Fifa president's nephew.

The announcement came a week after Fifa set out a two-year plan, working closely with Transparency International to reform the organisation following a series of damaging corruption scandals.

Sylvia Schenk, the author of Transparency International's damning report on Fifa, told the BBC that even if Sepp Blatter played no part in the decision to award the contract, it raised questions again about the governing body's lack of accountability.

She said: "When you have a situation where two relatives are in leading positions in two companies which agree a significant contract, it is of utmost importance for Fifa to be as transparent as possible regarding the decision-making process and Sepp Blatter's involvement in that decision.

"Given the situation Fifa is in right now, it would be better for Fifa to be more pro-active with their information where there could be a perception of a conflict of interest."

For its part, FIFA explains that its Finance Committee made the recommendation of Infront which was ratified by its Executive Committee (pictured at the top of this post). Sepp Blatter chairs the executive committee. FIFA clearly saw this as problematic because in a statement to the BBC FIFA explained that specific actions were taken based on this apparent conflict of interest:

"The Fifa president is not a member of the finance committee and was not present when the decision was made. The Fifa president did not take part in any meetings or discussions and was not involved in the tender process."

The 2009 FIFA Code of Ethics has this brief section on Conflicts of Interest (PDF):

1. Before being elected or appointed, officials shall disclose any personal interests that could be linked with their prospective function.

2. While performing their duties, officials shall avoid any situation that could lead to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest arise if officials have, or appear to have, private or personal interests that detract from their ability to perform their duties as officials with integrity in an independent and purposeful manner. Private or personal interests include gaining any possible advantage for himself, his family, relatives, friends and acquaintances.

3. Officials may not perform their duties in cases with an existing or potential conflict of interest. Any such conflict shall be immediately disclosed and notified to the organisation for which the official performs his duties.

4. If an objection is made concerning an official’s existing or potential conflict of interest, it shall be reported immediately to the organisation for which the official performs his duties.

5. The deciding authority of the relevant organisation shall decide on such conflicts of interest.

Given the vagueness of these guidelines, it does appear that transparency is the only way that FIFA begins to gain some credibility. Consider that the chair of its Ethics Committee stands accused of bribery, a charge that he refutes the chair of the Finance Committee is under investigation for bribery, which he also refutes, and Sepp Blatter is the chairman of the Executive Committee which makes final decisions for FIFA, including those on conflicts of interest (as far as I can tell from the vacuous guidelines reproduced above). One might be forgiven for thinking that the entire governance structure is compromised from top to bottom.

In such a circumstance, as Fink argues above, the Infront case provides a perfect case for FIFA to operate under a full disclosure -- of both its internal governance mechanisms as well as its decision making process that resulted in a company headed by its President being awarded a substantial contract.

While it is unclear what FIFA is going to do, an interesting subplot that is developing is the relationship of Transparency International to FIFA. Something is going to have to give in one of the two organizations.

Add Neoptism Rules to the List of Needed FIFA Reforms

2011-10-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

One week ago Sepp Blatter spoke about the need for FIFA to undergo serious governance reform. Here is what FIFA did this week:

FIFA said it also chose Swiss-based agency Infront Sports and Media in a tender process to handle sales across 26 Asian territories including China and India.

"Infront offered the best package for this important and very complex project both in financial as well as marketing aspects," Niclas Ericson, FIFA's director of television, said in a statement released by Infront.

Infront has long been scrutinized by FIFA's critics.

The Zug-based agency has close connections to FIFA's discredited former marketing partner ISL, which went bankrupt in 2001 and is once more at the center of allegations regarding kickbacks paid to senior FIFA officials in the 1990s.

Infront has been led since 2006 by Philippe Blatter, now its president and chief executive, who is a nephew of FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

The Infront deal may indeed be perfectly legitimate, but absent practices of "good governance" it is impossible for an outsider to tell, which cedes the territory to FIFA's critics (e.g. here in PDF).

For most organizations, nepotism is generally not viewed favorably as a characteristic of "good governance." FIFA take note.

Damian Collins MP on FIFA in the House of Commons

2011-10-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

The discussion starts at 17:11:22.and continues to 17:20:00.

Here is a link to the text of Mr. Collins' remarks on FIFA and the subsequent exchange:

1.	The presence of a superstar in a tournament is associated with reduced performance from other competitors. In general, the adverse superstar effect is larger for higher-skilled golfers relative to lower-skilled players
2.	Reduced performance is not attributable to the adoption of risky strategies. Players do not appear to be “going for the green” more in the presence of a superstar. Moreover, the variance of players’ hole-by-hole scores in PGA tournaments is not statistically significantly higher when Woods is in the field relative to when he does not participate.
3.	Superstars must be “super” to create adverse effects: The adverse superstar effect is large in periods in which Woods is particularly successful and disappears during periods in which he is performing relatively poorly on the course.