The Guardian's Statistical Analysis of Ye Shiwen's 400IM

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The Guardian has a fantastic feature which dives into the data on Ye Shiwen's gold medal-winning 400IM at London 2012. The race that has prompted unending debate and controversy, mainly because Ye swam the final leg of the race faster than her male counterpart, Ryan Lochte of the US.

Just how rare is that feat?  The Guardian does some impressive data analysis and concludes:

Looking at the results from the men's and women's 400m individual medley finals from London 2012 and from last year's World Championships in Shanghai, Ye's performance on Saturday is the only occasion where a female has completed either the final 50m or 100m in a faster time than any male finalist.

At this stage Ye's performance certainly does seem statistically extraordinary, but widening the data-set to include lower pedigree events shows her to be less of an outlier.

Adding the results for 400m medley finalists at the US Olympic trials, 2012 European Championships and 2010 Asian Games raises the number of freestyle phases by female swimmers that beat at least one male finalist to 27.

But Ye's performances remain statistically remarkable. Of the 40 freestyle legs swum by male finalists, her 58.68 second split beats almost three quarters (27).

It remains impossible to say with any certainty that Ye's swim was anything other than mightily impressive, but it is clear that her performances are in a different statistical bracket to contemporary world class female medley swimmers.

This deeper analysis of the data confirms my conclusion, based on much less data, that answers to questions of doping simply cannot be found in the data.  As Ross Tucker at Sporting Science explains (emphasis in original):

performance analysis will never constitute proof.  Let me repeat that - performance analysis will never constitute proof.  Put differently, in case you missed it - you cannot analyze someone's performance, be it their age, their improvement, their splits, and infer that they are doping based solely on these observations.  Why?  Because performance is too complex, and we have neither the sensitivity nor the reliability to make a strong conclusion.

So, what performance analysis can do is ask questions.  That's all.  The questions are asked based on what we see, but they are answered based on what we can find.  I'm all for questions - I think that questions drive transparency, and transparency is the key to cleaning up sport. . .

But that's where the answer lies.  The question is found in performances, in history, and while these can easily become generalizations, they are not bad, in and of themselves.  The answers, however, lie in "detective work", and testing.  Stop looking for "smoking guns" - you will not find them.

One of the hallmarks of good governance in sport is a commitment to due process. Ye Shiwen should be treated in accordance to that commitment. She is innocent until proven guilty. The rush to judgment by certain members of media playing judge, jury, executioner is not just unseemly, but counter to the ideals of sport.

Bundesliga 2012-2013 Season-Long Prediction Contest

The Least Thing 2012-2013 season-long Bundesliga prediction contest is now open for entries. Get your entries in before the first game on 24 August in order to participate.

To enter, in the comments below simply rank your prediction for the end-of-season table from 1 through 18.  The tie-breaker will be first selection of champion and then relegation.  I will at a few points through the season provide updates on standings and discuss the competition.

For those of you not fully up to speed on the Bundesliga (shame!), you can get more information here and here and here..

The metric of skill used as the baseline for evaluation in this competition will be the final table from last year (seen to the left, with promoted teams added in).  I will be happy to use other metrics of skill as they are available (and pointers welcomed in the comments). 

For those new here wanting to get up to speed on this notion of "skill" in prediction, please see the posts here and here.

The winner of the competition wins a signed copy of The Climate Fix.  Good luck!

Did Ye Shiwen Dope? Evidence Says No

UPDATE: At Science of Sport there is an excellent discussion of the technical aspects of Ye's race and the questions that it raises.

Chinese Olympic swimmer Ye Shiwen has been at the center of controversy since her impressive gold meal-winning effort in the 400 IM on Saturday. Sky News explains:

An international row has erupted over Ye Shiwen, 16, after she took five seconds off her personal best and more than a second off the world record in the 400m individual medley.

She completed her final 50m in 28.93 seconds, putting her 0.17 seconds quicker than American swimming star Ryan Lochte in the men's 400m medley earlier on the same evening.

John Leonard, the US executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, described the schoolgirl's performance as suspicious and "disturbing".

In comments that sparked rumours of doping, he branded the lightning-speed swim "unbelievable". Meanwhile, previous world record holder Steph Rice said it was "insanely fast". As China reacted with anger to the suggestion of foul play, Ye denied taking performance-enhancing drugs and said her results come from hard work and training.

Does data from the history of the 400 IM in the Olympics suggest anything odd? Have a look for yourself in the graph at the top of this post which shows medal-winning times in the event since 1964 (data: here 1964-2008, and here for 2012).

Ye's improvement over Stephanie Rice's 2008 gold medal time in Beijing was 1.3 seconds. But Rice's improvement over Yana Klochkova's 2004 gold medal in Athens was a much larger 5.3 seconds. Nothing odd there.

The dataset is nonetheless interesting with a rapid decrease in times from 1964 to 1980, with the massive improvements in speed in 1976 and 1980 coming from East German swimmers, later implicated in a broad pattern of government-sponsored doping. In 1998 the NYT reported:

[In 1976] the East German women dominated the Olympic swimming in Montreal, winning 11 of a possible 13 gold medals and drowning the formidable hopes of the American star Shirley Babashoff. The East German women had not won a single gold medal at the 1972 Games in Munich, but when the Americans voiced suspicions in 1976 that the East Germans were using performance-enhancing drugs, they were dismissed by many as being poor losers.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, however, documents and court testimony have established the existence of what was long suspected: that East Germany operated a state-sponsored system of providing performance-enhancing drugs to as many as 10,000 athletes from 1968 to 1988. For East Germany, a country of 16 million people, the illicit system gained it scores of Olympic medals, and with those medals considerable stature for an otherwise isolated Communist state.

Then from 1980 to 2000 the winning times did not improve, with the tainted East German record standing until 2000, when 17-year old Ukrainian swimmer Yana Klochkova won the gold medal. Olympic medal-winning times have steadily declined since then.

My reading of the history of times in the 400 IM suggests that there is nothing obviously apparent from the data to suggest anything suspicious about Ye's performance. Obviously something changed sicne 200 to enable improvements after decades of none. Ultimately, such data can only suggest suspicion. The only judgment on doping that matters is that determined by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

As Sky News reports, WADA has found Ye to be clean:

Olympic officials, other swimmers and former athletes have also hit back, insisting that any competitor should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

British Olympic Association chairman Lord Moynihan said: "We know how on top of the game Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) are and Wada have passed her as clean. That's the end of the story.

"And it is regrettable there is so much speculation out there. I don't like it. I think it is wrong. Let us recognise that there is an extraordinary swimmer out there who deserves the recognition of her talent in these Games."

Mark Adams, communications director for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) added: "These are the world's best athletes competing at the very highest level. We have seen all sorts of records broken already all over the place."

He stressed that a "very, very strong drug testing programme" was in place. "We are very confident that if there are cheats we will catch them, as we already have done," he said.

Asked if he was disappointed that talk turns to doping when a world record is smashed, he added: "It is inevitably a sad result of the fact that there are people who dope and who cheat but I equally think it's very sad if we can't applaud a great performance. Let's always give the benefit of the doubt to athletes."

If WADA says she is clean, then that is good enough for me. Congrats to Ye Shiwen -- 2012 IM Olympic Gold Medal Winner!

Skill in Prediction: Olympic Medals Edition

Not long ago I offered a critique of a statistical methodology used to predict Olympic medal outcomes. In my critique, I explained that a naive prediction -- the medals won in the previous Olympic games -- outperformed a sophisticated statistical model, as shown below.

What the graph indicates is that the statistical model had no skill -- it provided no value-added to the naive forecast.

At the FT, Martin Stabe is tracking four such models as follows:

• Emily Williams, a PhD candidate at London Business School updated a model first developed by  Andrew Bernard of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth for the 2000 games in Sydney. It focuses on population, income per capita, total GDP, and host-nation advantage to explain Olympic performace.
• Daniel Johnson, an economist at Colorado College has used a similar model to publish predictions for Olympics for several years. A change to his approach for the 2012 adds a host-nation effect that pre-dates and post-dates the current games, so China and Brazil should benefit in addition to Great Britain), and eliminates an earlier focus on political structures and climate.
• José Ursúa and Kamakshya Trivedi of Goldman Sachs, who, as part of a recently-published note on the economics of the Olympics, highlighted the strength of the host-nation advantage in certain sports and used the bank’s “Growth Environment Score”, a proprietary summary statistic used to score countries’ institutional structures, as a key independent variable.
• PWC’s briefing paper Modelling Olympic Performance, which found population, average income levels (measured by GDP per capita at PPP exchange rates), ex-Soviet status and host-nation effect to be statistically-significant factors.

Here I will follow along the FT medal-tracking exercise and evaluate the model predictions against the naive forecast based on the outcomes of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. My aim is to evaluate the predictions, which is a bit different that the purpose of the FT exercise, which I take is to evaluate country performance versus expectations.

However, to evaluate country performance appropriately, one needs to know the fidelity of ones expectations. Otherwise you won;t be able to distinguish a country's outperformance from just poor expectations. Stay tuned as the games progress for the quantitative analysis.

bin Hammam vs. FIFA: A Victory for Sports Governance

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has released its full decision in the dispute between Mohammed bin Hammam and FIFA (available here in PDF). The dispute centers on FIFA's lifetime suspension of bin Hammam for allegedly bribing Caribbean football officials in May, 2011 in his effort to win the FIFA presidency.

In a nutshell, $1,000,000 was distributed at a special meeting of Caribbean football officials -- that is, representatives to FIFA with a vote in the FIFA presidential election. The money was distributed in cash in brown paper bags in $40,000 allotments to 25 individuals. The disbursement was done by Jack Warner, then head of the Caribbean Football Union (since caught up in his own series of scandals). Of note, the CAS judgment says that "Mr. Warner appears to be prone to an economy with the truth." You can actually see a video of the disbursements being made here.

Almost immediately bin Hammam was accused by FIFA (and coincidentally Sepp Blatter supporters) of violating FIFA's ethics rules. An investigation took place, incidentally led by Louis Freeh who also led the recent Penn State investigation, which concluded that circumstantial evidence implicated bin Hammam in the bribery.

The result of all this was that bin Hammam was forced to step aside in the FIFA presidential election, leaving Blatter to run unopposed, and ultimately was given a lifetime ban from FIFA, which was upheld on appeal. For bin Hammam, the next step was to take FIFA to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which has jurisdiction over such disputes as described in the FIFA statutes.

Here is where it gets even more interesting. (Yes, more interesting than cash in paper bags!) The defense offered by bin Hammam was not that he was falsely accused, but rather that FIFA volated his due process rights in its decision making process that ultimately led to his suspension. From the decision:

79. The Appellant challenges the Decision.

80. He alleges that FIFA has disregarded the principle of due process in reaching its decision to sanction him.

81. The Appellant submits that, from the very beginning of the proceedings (i.e. the letter dated July 14, 2011, to the FIFA Ethics Committee), he demanded that the FIFA Ethics and Appeal Committees should apply the standards of due process as guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights (hereinafter, “ECHR”), Swiss law and general principles of sports law.

The decision further explains bin Hammam's argument:

83. The Appellant considers that the principle of due process set forth in the ECHR applies to FIFA, even if it is not a state, since it is the private regulator of football in many countries that are signatories of the ECHR, including Switzerland, where FIFA is based. The Appellant states that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a private body, such as FIFA, that undertakes the role of a tribunal to the exclusion of state courts, must comply with Article 6 ECHR. In this case, FIFA took a decision affecting Mr. Bin Hammam’s civil rights, and adjudicated on a criminal charge, namely bribery. Thus, FIFA is bound to apply ECHR principles.

84. Further, the Appellant alleges that CAS jurisprudence has long recognized that it must apply the standards of the ECHR. Moreover, it considers that the relevant provisions of the ECHR form part of the lex sportiva or lex ludica recognized by the CAS. Therefore, by rejecting the principles of Article 6, the FIFA Ethics and Appeal Committees committed a grave violation of the principles of the lex sportiva which CAS jurisprudence demands that they apply.

The decision then goes on at some length to describe in detail the substance of what it sees are due process violations in FIFA's decision making.

In response FIFA focused on bin Hammam's alleged guiltiness of the charges and decided to punt on the issues of due process. The decision explains that FIFA argued,

... CAS panels should not in such circumstances consider arguments alleging the violation of due process. The Respondent sees no reason to address in any detail the Appellant’s complaints on those items.

Wow. It is telling that FIFA appeared to believe that addressing questions of due process would be unnecessary.

The CAS found, in a 2-1 judgment, in favor of bin Hammam, noting that their judgment was not a statement about the likelihood of his innocence, but rather a statement about FIFA's failure to prove its case. In fact, the CAS suggested that bin Hammam was likely guilty of the charges.

The verdict offered a series of stinging rebukes to FIFA. Among the conclusions reached in the CAS judgement:

201. It is readily apparent that the investigation carried out by FIFA was neither thorough in respect of the matters that it did address, nor comprehensive in its scope. Of great concern to the Panel is the decision by FIFA to terminate the investigation of Mr. Warner when he resigned from FIFA (see FIFA press release quoted at para. 160 above).

202. The Panel is bound to note that there was apparently no requirement to close those FIFA Ethics Committee procedures, as it is plain to it that FIFA would continue to be able to exercise jurisdiction over acts occurring whilst Mr. Warner was a FIFA official. Mr. Warner is at the heart of the events of May 10 and 11, and there is every possibility that if the FIFA investigations of Mr. Warner had continued at least some of the missing facts that have hampered the work of this Panel – facts that go to the heart of the gaps in the events - might have been clearly established, one way or the other. By closing the Ethics Committee procedures, FIFA disabled itself from pursuing a proper, thorough and complete investigation of Mr. Bin Hammam’s role in the matters that give rise to these proceedings. In effect, the paucity of the evidence is connected to FIFA’s own actions and inactions. In this regard, the Panel notes that Mr. Blatter declined to answer its questions concerning the circumstances of Mr. Warner’s resignation and the termination of disciplinary proceedings against him, as well as the relationship between these two events.

The CAS in effect has told FIFA to clean up their decision processes and try again:

208. By lifting the ban of Mr Bin Hammam, the Panel does not necessarily consider that this matter is concluded. FIFA is about to set up two new ethics committees, one to undertake investigations, and the other to adjudicate cases that may follow an investigation. In the event new evidence relating to the present case is discovered and without prejudice to the principle of res judicata and other principles of applicable law, it would still be possible to re-open this case, in order to complete the factual background properly and to determine if Mr. Bin Hammam has committed any violation of the FCE.

This judgment represents a victory for the rule of law, for due process and for the notion that FIFA must conform to such norms rather than operate in an ad hoc manner. Of further note is that bin Hammam's victory in this dispute, which certainly does nothing to change his status in world football (as he is being investigated under other allegations of violations), reinforces the need for a jurisprudence of  sport consistent with the widely accepted norms of jurisprudence which comprise democratic governance.

That, in the end, is a victory for sports governance.

Inside Play the Game 2011

Here is an excellent overview of some of the themes discussed at Play the Game 2011 and some of its most colorful participants. The 30 minute documentary was produced by students at the German Sport University Cologne, and has just been released in English.

Of note, at 15:00 and following the video shows some of the details from the debate between Walter DeGregorio, FIFA spokesman, and investigative journalist Andrew Jennings.

Enjoy!

Meet the Superhumans

Meet the Superhumans from Stitch Editing on Vimeo.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

News reports from Japan and Australia tells us a lot about sports culture, and how slowly things actually change. From Japan courtesy the IHT:

It was precisely a year ago that the Japanese women’s soccer team won the World Cup, beating the United States in the final and giving a boost to the spirits of a nation that had been battered by an earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear disaster.

But when they flew to Europe on Sunday along with the men’s team, the women were in coach seats while the men were up in business class. The Japanese Football Association said the teams had left Tokyo together on the same Japan Airlines flight.

From Australia courtesy the SMH:

Australia's women basketballers have confirmed they also had different travel arrangements to the men's squad for the journey to London. While the Boomers flew in business class, the Opals made the long-haul trip in premium economy - and that was an upgrade.

The Opals have never protested publicly about this longstanding treatment of national teams and players would not comment on the record today, but they do not like it and say such inequality has been a long-standing source of contention.

From various perspectives -- equity, team spirit, pubic relations -- what a boneheaded set of policies. The tone-deafness to it all speaks volumes.

Australian basketball officials dug their hole a little deeper when excusing the policy as a matter of average height, which make no sense, as Samantha Lane in the SMH pierces through immediatey:

"For example, the average height of our male basketball players is 200.2cm. The average height of our female basketball players is 183cm."

But Basketball Australia was unable to confirm if flight arrangements had ever been based on individuals' heights given Opals rising star Liz Cambage is 203 cm tall, while Boomers players Adam Gisbon and Patrick Mills stand 188 cm and 183cm respectively.

Here is some friendly policy advice, if you are unable to justify a policy in public in a way that is compelling and makes sense, then it probably is a policy worth rethinking.

FIFA Executive Committee: Exactly What Changed?

A Guest Post by Davin Larkin of @ChangeFIFA

Recall:

"The new-look ethics panel was of the main recommendations of Pieth's committee, ...Pieth's report slammed the FIFA ethics committee's handling of a spate of bribery allegations that engulfed over a third of the Ex-Co and led to a lifetime ban for Mohamed Bin Hammam in the biggest crisis to hit FIFA in its 108-year history. The Independent Governance Committee said FIFA's management of the corruption was "insufficient to meet the challenges of a major global sport governing body. This has led to unsatisfactory reactions to persistent allegations."In particular, the IGC has identified a lack of proactive and systematic investigation of allegations. In some instances, allegations were insufficiently investigated and where sanctions were imposed, they are at times insufficient and clearly unconvincing." - Mark Bisson

So the old Ethics Committee was terrible, but exactly who is new? 

Key: ((N)) = New

Appointment of the following persons as members of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee until the 63rd FIFA Congress 2013: 

• ((N))Chairman: Michael J Garcia 
• Mr Robert Torres (Guam) 
• Mr Les Murray (Australia) 
• ((N))Mr Ronald Jones (Barbados) 
• Mr Jorge Iván Palacio (Colombia) 
• Mr Noël Le Graët (France) 
• Mr Ahmed Ould Abderrahmane (Mauritania) 

= 2 New of 7

Appointment of the following persons as members of the adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee until the 63rd FIFA Congress 2013:

• ((N)) Chairman: Hans-Joachim Eckert
• Mr Petrus Damaseb (Namibia)
• Mr Juan Pedro Damiani (Uruguay)
• Mr Burton K. Haimes (USA)
• Mr Abdoulaye Mokhtar Diop (Senegal)
• Mr Jack Kariko (Papua New Guinea)
• Mr Yngve Hallén (Norway)
• Mrs Thi My Dung Nguyen (Vietnam)

= 1 New of 8

COMPARE: Ethics Committees

OLD...14 people

NEW...12 same people...3 new people

CONCLUSION: Almost nothing has changed.

Mark Pieth on FIFA Reform: One Third Way Done

Speaking to the FT, Mark Pieth takes a critical view of FIFA reform efforts thus far:

Mr Pieth welcomed Fifa’s decisions, although he said his recommendation of war crimes prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to chair the investigatory chamber had been overlooked in favour of Mr [Michael J.] Garcia. However, Mr Pieth said he considered Mr Garcia of equivalent calibre to Mr Moreno-Ocampo.

Mr Pieth also welcomed the appointment of his choice for the adjudicatory chairmanship of Mr Eckert, who has presided over a number of high-profile corporate trials, and the decision to do away with a time limit.

“Anyone who has doubts that they [the investigators] can look at the past can see now they have the ability,” Mr Pieth said.

But he added that the Fifa decisions represented only a third of the changes Mr Pieth and his colleagues had recommended. The other recommendations include cataloguing potentially critical payments, term limits for officials, campaign financing for presidential candidates, conflict of interest regulation and greater transparency over financial contributions by Fifa to member countries for developing football.

“Will they do the rest, or will they say, ‘thank you’? Will they take out what they like and detach the rest?” Mr Pieth said.

Back in March, Pieth anticipated how FIFA might respond:

“I’m at the moment pretty optimistic. But it’s very open. If it works out I’ll be patted on the back. If it fails I’ll be an idiot. I think we will know by mid-April whether they are serious.” And if they aren’t? “If we are unsuccessful, we would have to walk away. ‘We’ve had it, goodbye.’ This would be a dreary result. Sponsors, the media, everybody would be left with something they couldn’t really digest, and Fifa would just carry on. Who would force Fifa?”

Are the one third of reforms, by Pieth's count, an indication of seriousness? Of course, if one uses Pieth's commissioned report from last fall as the basis for evaluating reform, FIFA scores far less than a one third success rate, as I showed here.

It does look like Pieth and the IGC is moving ahead, indicating that they have some faith that the process is generating positive results.

What it Means to be a Woman in the Olympics

In my latest column for Bridges I discuss the newly adopted regulations by the IOC which determine who is eligible to compete in the woman's events. Arbiters have turned to science to draw a bright line, but unfortunately science paints in shades of grey.

Here is an excerpt:

[I]t turns out that the science of gender is not so straightforward, and human evolution has not made us all so that we easily fit into binary categories. The IOC recognizes this and explains that human biology "allows for forms of intermediate levels between the conventional categories of male and female." Recognizing this ambiguity, the IOC explains: "Nothing in these Regulations is intended to make any determination of sex."

Instead, it has tried to implement a regulation that uses science as a proxy for determining sex. Writing in The New York Times, a medical geneticist who advised the IOC argued that science could resolve this issue: "Let's forget for a while about gender identity politics" and focus on "one parameter that ... could entirely explain why men did better than women in elite sports." The proposed candidate parameter is biological levels of testosterone, admittedly imperfect but apparently serviceable.

The IOC explains that female athletes with levels of androgenic hormones that "fall into the male range" that confers a "functional" competitive advantage will be disqualified from competing in women's events. The IOC makes an explicit comparison between those athletes who have doped by taking steroids and those athletes whose bodies produce excessive levels of hormones. Such athletes can now be considered naturally doped – an oxymoron that betrays the illogic of the regulation.

Not only are the proposed regulations ambiguous – what is "the male range"? How is "functionality" determined? – but they are based on a selective reading of the science of sex and athletic performance. Despite a widespread belief that testosterone is the "one parameter" that determines athletic performance, the science is far more ambiguous. Writing in an academic paper published earlier this month, a team of researchers criticized the IOC's focus on testosterone, arguing: "The current scientific evidence, however, does not support the notion that endogenous testosterone levels confer athletic advantage in any straightforward or predictable way."

Like so many areas of decision making, the science of gender does not provide distinct lines that can make politics go away and render decision making straightforward. And gender is not the only such issue facing the IOC. The case of another South African athlete, Oscar Pistorius, who runs on artificial legs, has raised questions about the boundary between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. . .

Read the rest here.

Note: About the image above, from The Guardian:

In the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Adolf Hitler wanted to show the world the supremacy of the Aryan race - and he needed German athletes to win. Ratjen, notable for her deep voice and her refusal to share the shower room with the other female athletes, was Germany's entry for the women's high jump. She came fourth. Britain's competitor, Dorothy Tyler, who won a silver medal, remembers her. "I had competed against Dora and I knew she was a man," she says. "You could tell by the voice and the build. But 'she' was far from the only athlete. You could tell because they would always go into the toilet to get changed. We'd go and stand on the seat of the next-door cubicle or look under the door to see if we could catch them." Tyler held the world record for the high jump, but when officials wrote to her telling her that Ratjen had broken it, she wrote back. "I said: 'She's not a woman, she's a man,'" she says. "They did some research and found 'her' serving as a waiter called Hermann, so I got my world record back again." Dora, who had been born Hermann Ratjen, had in fact been a member of the Hitler Youth and said that the Nazis had forced him to enter as a woman.

Not the Droids You are Looking For

Sepp Blatter and FIFA have been rocked by the release last week of a Swiss court document revealing a huge bribery scandal and cover-up related to the so-called ISL affair.  In response Blatter has gone on the offensive with a campaign of "change the subject."

First, he has proposed that he may stand for re-election when his term is up:

Blatter has insisted he does not condone bribery and told the newspaper [Sonntagsblick] he could run for another term in 2015.

"Let's see how my health is,'' he told the paper. "I've just been for a checkup and I lost four kilograms (eight pounds).''

Last year, Blatter was elected for a fourth, four-year term as FIFA president. He was the only candidate.

Second, he has suggested that Germany won the rights to host 2006 World Cup via bribery:

When asked by the paper about rumors of corruption surrounding the decisions to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments to Russia and Qatar, respectively, Blatter responded: "World Cups being purchased…. I am reminded of the World Cup allotment for 2006, when someone left the room at the last moment. And instead of 10:10, the vote was suddenly 10:9 in favor of Germany…. Perhaps in that situation I was also too well-meaning and naïve."

The old Jedi may have turned to the dark side, but his powers remain strong ... these are not the droids you are looking for ...

Al Jazeera on Match Fixing

Jens Sejer Andersen on FIFA ISL Case

Writing at Play the Game, Jens Sejer Andersen has an extremely hard-hitting appraisal of the significance of the dossier released yesterday by a Swiss court on the FIFA-ISL bribery case. Here is an excerpt:

Play the Game has consistently argued that a fight against corruption in sport should not focus on persons, but on structures and systems. This position is no longer tenable.
So FIFA does have a range of inconvenient questions to answer, and so do other sports organisations including the International Olympic Committee:

• Can FIFA be governed by a person who knowingly and over many years has allowed tangible values to disappear in a massive, carefully orchestrated system of corruption?
• Can FIFA have an honorary, life-time president whose greed and bribe-taking is now established by court documents?
• Can FIFA live with the fact that more than 100 million Swiss Francs paid out as bribes from its closest business partners are not accounted for, or will FIFA open its archives and the memories of its chief officials and be honest about the past?
• Can other sports federations with business relations to ISL, like ATP in tennis, IAAF in athletics, FINA in swimming and FIBA in basketball, accept that some of their present leaders may have been part of this corruption system?
• Can the IOC tolerate that Blatter has flagrantly violated its code of ethics, or should he be shown the back door like Havelange?

Read the whole thing here.

A further comment: I have seen nothing in the media from any of the members of the FIFA Independent Governance Committee chaired by Mark Pieth. Of course, I may have missed something. However, given the magnitude of the revelations, a sustained silence from this group would speak volumes.

The Freeh Report on PSU and the NCAA "Dealth Penalty"

Earlier today the Freeh report on the Sandusky scandal at Penn State was released. What did it find? From p. 127:

For the past several decades, the university's Athletic Department was permitted to become a closed community. There was little personnel turnover or hiring from outside the University and strong internal loyalty. The football program, in particular, opted out of most of the University's Clery Act, sexual abuse awareness and summer camp procedures training. The Athletic Department was perceived by many in the Penn State community as "an island," where staff members lived by their own rules.

This description could be applied to many university athletic programs, and I recently made a similar complaint against the University of Colorado athletic program for a lack of transparency in a cocoon-like atmosphere (as related to budgets, not anything illegal as at PSU):

Decision making related to athletics is typically kept far from the faculty, and operates from within its own cocoon within the university bureaucracy. I am surely typical of most of my peers on the faculty in learning of the most recent gift and loan to the athletic department via the pages of the Daily Camera. This separation may make sense as big-time college athletics -- specifically men's football and basketball -- today have far more in common with their professional counterparts than with faculty in various departments on campus.

Yet, even as we recognize the tradition, uniqueness and importance of college athletics, it is precisely because of these values that the enterprise should be opened up to a greater degree of transparency and accountability in the broader university environment. CU is far from alone in this regard, but like others across the nation, has a long way to go.

Issues of institutional control are a frequent topic when it comes to athletic programs. If PSU cannot properly oversee its athletic department then what sort of sanctions might be appropriate?

Writing at ESPN, Andy Staples provides a strong defense of Penn State against calls for the so-called "death penalty" for its football program:

Think of it this way: If Sandusky was a recently retired surgeon, Paterno was the chief of surgery and Curley was the dean of Penn State's College of Medicine, would you be asking the Liaison Committee on Medical Education to make it impossible for Penn State to continue training physicians 11 years after the fact? Of course you wouldn't.

In making such an analogy, Staples may want to familiarize himself with federal regulations for the conduct of human subjects research, which does indeed have provisions that include the forbidding of that institution from conducting further research.  Specifically, according to the regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services, if oversight,

... determines that there is noncompliance with the HHS regulations and, as a result, recommends to appropriate HHS officials: (a) that an institution or an investigator be temporarily suspended or permanently removed from participation in specific projects, or (b) that HHS scientific peer review groups be notified of an institution's or an investigator's past noncompliance prior to review of new projects...
... determines that there is noncompliance with the HHS regulations and, as a result, recommends to appropriate HHS officials that institutions or investigators be debarred in accordance with the procedures specified at 45 CFR part 76. Debarment is a government-wide sanction.

Would the abuse of children constitute a "human subject" violation under federal statutes? If they were brought into the relevant program under the guise of the research activities, it is certainly plausible. And if so, the equivalent of a NCAA "dealth penalty" would be among the possible sanctions applied to the University.

Once again the question is whether an athletic department should play by the same rules as the faculty. Whether or not Penn State deserves the death penalty is unclear, but it is certainly the conversation that we should be having.

Expansion Happens

Writing at his Forbes blog Stefan Szymanski identifies some key similarities bewteen US college football and European club football (soccer).

1. In both cases regional leagues have evolved over a long period of time and command intense loyalty among fans (in Europe these are national leagues, in the US they are regional conferences- Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac12, etc).

2. The regional leagues generate highly uneven contests which has worked for the big teams (who can dominate) and for the little teams (since they get exposure to a high level of play).

3. TV has made a significant impact relatively recently compared to other sports (the 1984 antitrust case in the US opened up college football to blanket coverage, European leagues only really achieved significant exposure with the advent of pay TV systems in the late 1980s).

4. Now that it has, casual fans have started to ask the obvious question- what would happen if the big team in league X played the big team in league Y? The traditional league structures give relatively few opportunities to answer this question.

5. The potential TV revenues are driving realignments. For once, European football is ahead of American football. The European Cup, which was really an extended version of NCAA basketball’s March Madness (or vice versa) morphed into the Champions League in the 1990s, to generate an increased number of match-ups between top teams from different regional leagues.

The news that US college football has adopted a limited playoff system in coming years has motivated much discussion over the past week.  It is a subject I'll return to before long.

For now I'd point to the graph at the top of this post which shows the history of the expansion of the NCAA college basketball tournament. It shows that tournament expansion is the norm. Much the same can be said about the European club championships and the European championships, which are going to expand significantly in Euro 2016 in France.

How long will the college football tournament stay at 4 games? My guess is not as long as the NCAA stayed at 8 games.

An Olympics Qualifying "Rules Hole"

One of the distinctive features of sport is that action on the field is governed by a set of laws or rules that are expected to cover every contingency. This is certainly not the case for governance of sport off the field, where it seems that anything is possible.

The expectation of comprehensive is a key difference between on-field sport jurisprudence and the rest of society. So it is as notable as it is rare to encounter an on field situation that falls outside the rules. It is notable for jurisprudential reasons, but also for reasons of probability, as the vast on-filed experience afforded by competition typically tests rules in all their dimensions.

Earlier this week a "rules hole" was revealed in the procedures of USA Track & Field, the national governing body, which has responsibility for overseeing the track and field athletes who will represent the US in the upcoming Olympics.

In the finals of the 100m on Saturday Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh (pictured above) finished in a third place tie. With the top 3 advancing to the Olympics, a third place tie is problematic. It turned out that the USATF had no procedure for resolving a third place tie, and needed to come up with one quickly.

The resulting policy, designed and implemented in a hurry, can be seen here. As Oliver Wendell Homes said, hard cases make bad law, and this situation appears no different. The new policy has already been panned and the participants are already gaming the new rule in hope of some advantage. I'd expect that it will be revisited after the Olympics and after the spotlight of a single case has dimmed.

Other examples of "rules holes" and fillers:

• The "tuck rule" in professional American football
• The four corners offense in college basketball
• The "groove rule" in professional golf
• The "Hack-a-Shaq" strategy in the NBA (no rules change, so maybe not really a hole)
• Sunderland's "beach ball goal" against Liverpool in 2009 (still debated, video above)

Many, but not all, of the "rules holes" are actually the result of technological innovation. For instance, the NFL "tuck rule" and other rules that define fumbles and catches are the result of instant reply that allow the game to be seen with much more precision than was previously the case. Perhaps ironically, the dead heat in the 100m race this week may have been resolved in earlier years with less precise technology.

"Rule holes" show us that even in the most contrived situations unforeseen contingencies arise. How we deal with those contingencies -- in sport but also broader society -- is a hallmark of good policy making.

An EU Convention on Match-Fixing?

Play the Game reports that the Council of Europe has recently resolved to as one of its subsidiary groups to initiate coordination of "a possible new international legal instrument relating to manipulation of sports results."

The full resolution, which was passed in March says the following (available here in PDF):

--Welcome the work performed in the framework of the Feasibility Study on a possible new international legal instrument relating to manipulation of sports results, and notably match-fixing, based on the Recommendation CM/Rec(2011)10;
--Invite the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), where appropriate, in co-operation with the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC), Moneyval, and the Economic Crime Division (Cyber crime), and in coordination with the European Union :

• to launch the negotiation of a possible new international convention against manipulation of sports results and notably match-fixing, that could establish an appropriate framework of commitment and co-operation to fight this scourge;
• to involve in this work all interested EPAS members and observer states (which are or are not parties to the European Cultural Convention), with a view to developing an instrument that may be opened for signature to non European states, as well as by states, which have not yet joined EPAS guaranteeing a broad participation in the discussions and a broad support for the possible outcome(s);
• to report to the Committe of Ministers on a draft instrument that may be eventually finalised as a convention or as another instrument;
• to take into account in the negociations the possibility of setting up a platform of co-ordination and follow-up that will rely, as far as possible on existing bodies and structures and that will ensure co-operation with the betting operators and the sports movement;
• to continue to implement the Recommendation CM/Rec(2011)10;

--Propose to the Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe to invite the CDPC, in co-operation with GRECO and EPAS to consider, as a separate issue, the feasibility of an additional protocol to the Council of Europe Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS no. 173), that could expand to the sport sector the scope of application of its provisions;
--Invite EPAS to explore the possibilities of the establishment of an international network of national authorities in charge of the policy regarding the betting market, in order to address sport integrity issues;

I see that neither Italy nor Turkey are members of the EPAS, which raises some interesting questions about the process of initiating a convention, as both countries are sites of recent major match-fixing scandals. I will make some inquiries about the significance of that fact, and report back.

The actions by the EPAS and the COE are most welcome and add additional evidence that the resolution of vexing sports governance problems lies with governing bodies and not sports organizations alone.

The Original Panenka

H/T Dirty Tackle

A good imitation:

Ukraine's Goal That Wasn't

As if more evidence was needed why goal line technology makes sense.

European Patriotism and Nationalism

Nationalism and patriotism are important concepts in political culture which are also expressed on a daily basis in sporting competitions. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses the concepts as follows:

Discussions of both patriotism and nationalism are often marred by lack of clarity due to the failure to distinguish the two. Many authors use the two terms interchangeably. Among those who do not, quite a few have made the distinction in ways that are not very helpful. In the 19th century, Lord Acton contrasted “nationality” and patriotism as affection and instinct vs. a moral relation. Nationality is “our connection with the race” that is “merely natural or physical,” while patriotism is the awareness of our moral duties to the political community (Acton 1972, 163). In the 20th century, Elie Kedourie did the opposite, presenting nationalism as a full-fledged philosophical and political doctrine about nations as basic units of humanity within which the individual can find freedom and fulfilment, and patriotism as mere sentiment of affection for one's country (Kedourie 1985, 73–74). 

George Orwell contrasted the two in terms of aggressive vs. defensive attitudes. Nationalism is about power: its adherent wants to acquire as much power and prestige as possible for his nation, in which he submerges his individuality. While nationalism is accordingly aggressive, patriotism is defensive: it is a devotion to a particular place and a way of life one thinks best, but has no wish to impose on others (Orwell 1968, 362). This way of distinguishing the two attitudes comes close to an approach popular among politicians and widespread in everyday discourse that indicates a double standard of the form “us vs. them.” Country and nation are first run together, and then patriotism and nationalism are distinguished in terms of the strength of the love and special concern one feels for it, the degree of one's identification with it. When these are exhibited in a reasonable degree and without ill thoughts about others and hostile actions towards them, that is patriotism; when they become unbridled and cause one to think ill of others and act badly towards them, that is nationalism. Conveniently enough, it usually turns out that we are patriots, while they are nationalists...

My attention to this subject resulted from a column in this week's FT by Simon Kuper who argues that the Spanish national football team has served as a powerful means of integrating the nation.  He writes:

When Spain won the World Cup in 2010, many fans celebrated even in Bilbao and Barcelona. These people were not binning their regional identities. Rather, they felt both Basque and Spanish, or Catalan and Spanish. Xavi himself again showed the way: after the World Cup final, he ran around the field waving a Catalan flag. This was a new sort of nationalism, one that Franco would not have understood. . .

All over Spain, people are watching. Meanwhile, the government battles to stay in the euro. But even if it fails, Spain will surely keep exchanging cutting-edge knowledge with other European countries and retain its improved emotional relationship between regions and centre. The new Spain still exists, and this team exemplifies it.

If it works at the national level, then a logical next step would be, why not use sport at the European level as a means of fostering "europatriotism"? Indeed, some have argued that the entire European project has been an antidote to nationalism on the continent, and an extsention to sport would seem to make sense.

Writing in 2006 Kuper readily dismissed such thinking in a discussion of the Ryder Cup, the only pan-European team competition in major sports:

The "European" veneer at Ryder Cups is thin. Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank, says: "It's interesting that in the last few holes, when a European makes a putt, they take out their national flag and go off to celebrate with their national supporters."

And yet Europatriotism exists. A "Eurobarometer" survey for the European Commission last year showed that 63 per cent of Europeans felt "proud" to be Europeans. Britain scored lowest, with 44 per cent. However, proud Europeans are almost all proud of their own countries. Europatriotism doesn't replace national pride. It supplements it.

And although Europatriotism is a widespread sentiment, it's a weak one. Nobody has ever run drunken out of his house waving the EU flag. That's why Romano Prodi, then commission president, got nowhere with his suggestion that European teams in the Olympics fly the European flag besides their national ones.

Even the players in the Ryder Cup seldom lose themselves in Europatriotism. Asked "what is patriotism to you guys?", Ireland's Padraig Harrington replied: "I think we are playing for our tour." Italy's Costantino Rocca said of the Americans: "They are more attached to this cup than we are because they are from one nation."

Brussels will have to accept that Europatriotism is a weaker emotion than real patriotism. Then it might consider adopting the Ryder Cup as a model. Keohane notes that the European team was created not out of love but out of pragmatism. It was accepted as the only way to compete with the outside world. That is probably how most Europeans regard the EU.

With the EU and the Euro Zone facing a massive political crisis of identity, it may again be time to rethink Romano Prodi's suggestion of using sport as a means of cultural and social integration. Pan-European elections would have a similar, and much more significant, effect of focusing attention on Europe rather than on its member states.

Of course, such reflection might only serve to rue opportunities missed. Developing a sense of patriotism for an institution only a few decades old is always going to be a mountain to climb in the context of nationalist passions stoked for centuries and longer.

Friday Funny: Tomorrow's Headlines Today

Courtesy Andy Halls at The Sun, via Twitter.

UEFA Euro 2012 Tiebreakers

What happens if teams are level on points after the group stage of Euro 2012?

The UEFA Regulations for the tournament provide the answer on p. 6 (here in PDF):

8.07 If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria are applied, in the order given; to determine the rankings:

a) higher number of points obtained in the matches among the teams in question;
b) superior goal difference in the matches among the teams in question (if more than two teams finish equal on points);
c) higher number of goals scored in the matches among the teams in question (if more than two teams finish equal on points);
d) superior goal difference in all the group matches;
e) higher number of goals scored in all the group matches;
f) position in the UEFA national team coefficient ranking system (see Annex I, paragraph 1.2.2);
g) fair play conduct of the teams (final tournament);
h) drawing of lots.

8.08 If two teams which have the same number of points, the same number of goals scored and conceded play their last group match against each other and are still equal at the end of that match, the ranking of the two teams in question is determined by kicks from the penalty mark (Article 16), provided no other teams within the group have the same number of points on completion of all group matches. Should more than two teams have the same number of points, the criteria listed under paragraph 8.07 apply.

Wrage Discovers FIFA's Faustian Bargain

Writing in the FT last week, Roger Blitz reveals that FIFA is only willing to go so far and no further on its reform efforts. What is the latest point of contention? The inclusion of women in FIFA governance (I kid you not). 

Blitz writes:

The Independent Governance Committee, set up by Fifa president Sepp Blatter to combat accusations of inertia over dealing with investigating corruption allegations, recommended the reform and nominated four women for the eight seats on the investigatory and adjudicatory chambers.

But Alexandra Wrage, an IGC member, said she was told at the lunch the nomination of any female candidates was “entirely unacceptable”.

Ms Wrage told the Financial Times: “They sat down next to me, two senior Fifa executives. They said, ‘you are pushing too hard, leave this for another time. You’ve made a lot of progress, you should be content.’ It was so clear-cut, it was expressly stated.”

Ms Wrage, who advises companies on anti-bribery compliance, declined to reveal the identity of the officials who, she said, had created an atmosphere of “unapologetic chauvinism”.

She added: “I was gobsmacked. We were making progress in this environment. I guess you have to admire their candour.”

Her account was corroborated by Guillermo Jorge, another IGC member, in an email to the FT.

The revelations can't be said to be terribly surprising to anyone paying attention to FIFA "reform." Though, it was only three weeks ago that Alexandra Wrage enthusiastically applauded FIFA efforts as being on the "threshold of reform."

Like Transparency International, it seems that TRACE International, which is led by Wrage, is learning about FIFA's commitment to reform through hard lessons of experience. Now she is talking about resigning from the IGC. It is hard to see how she can remain.

For his part Mark Pieth had some very strong criticisms of FIFA:

Mark Pieth, IGC chairman, said: “What this demonstrates is that this is an organisation which has a really long way to go. Gender issues are part of the governance issue, and they don’t seem to understand that.

“If you were to defend that attitude, you would say they are a boys’ club and they are in a transition phase.”

The IGC is expected to hold a conference call in the next few days to discuss how to respond. Ms Wrage said she was uncertain whether she could continue serving on the IGC.

Mr Pieth added: “What doesn’t surprise me is that this organisation has a problem with women in their ranks. That is typical. Obviously I’m saddened that we have to deal with this issue as well, but it just means more work.

“They need a kick from outside. I think it’s serious.”

If Wrage resigns from the committee it will do great damage to the FIFA 'reform" process, such as it is. However, if she stays, it will do great damage to her own credibility. Like Mark Pieth before her, Wrage is learning that binding oneself to FIFA can be a Faustian bargain. It looks like Placido Domingo got off easy.

Odds of Advancing in Euro 2012

The graphs in this post show the proportion of squads that advanced to the knock-out stages in the Euro football championships 1996 to 2008, during the period of a 16 team competition. The graph above shows that 100% of teams with 6 or more points advanced to the knock-out stage, with 75% with 5 points advancing and 57% of those with 4 pointsNo squad advanced with 3 or fewer points. One win is not enough and two is a guarantee.

The graph below shows that there is only a 1 in 4 chance of winning a group with 5 points, and 1 in 3 with 6 points. Going undefeated in the group stage is not a guarantee of winning the group, however, as two teams could each collect 7 points, but only one would win the group.  This has not happened since 1996, but such an outcome is still in play this year in all four groups.

Data from UEFA.

Clamp Down

Andrés Iniesta meets five of the Italians. [Courtesy Javier Matallanas via Martyn Ziegler on Twitter.]

Evocative of Maradonna 1982:

 And Messi 2010:

Also courtesy of Martyn Ziegler (from Ruud Verdellen on Twitter).

Transparency in College Athletics

I had an op-ed in The Daily Camera (our local Boulder paper) over the weekend on transparency in college athletics, with a focus on my home institution, the University of Colorado.

I explain that college athletics are not going anywhere anytime soon, however, that means a need for greater transparency and accountability:

The money involved is significant. According to an analysis from USA Today, from 2004 to 2010 CU Athletics received $33.3 million (inflation-adjusted) in direct university support, or about 12.4 percent of the total athletics budget over that time period. A recent report from Bloomberg found that CU students in the year 2010-2011 paid $625.58 each to subsidize the athletic department, a number exceeded in the Pac-12 only by Oregon State and Washington State. Washington and UCLA students contributed the least in the conference, about $100 per student, and Stanford, a private university, did not provide their spending.

The op-ed was motivated by some comments made by one of our university administrators, defending the news reported earlier this month that the Athletic department had received a $10 million low-interest loan from within the university, as well as a $3 million gift:

Frances Draper, CU vice chancellor for strategic relations, said the loan is scheduled to be paid back in six years at 2 percent interest. Draper said the loan did not have to be approved by the Board of Regents because eight years ago that panel gave schools the discretion to make internal loans without regent approval.

Draper said no tuition dollars were used for the loan or the $6 million in gifts. She said the funds come from interest earnings. Draper said faculty groups were made aware of the assistance the campus and system gave to the athletic department and they raised no objections to it because there was widespread approval by the faculty for the switch in conference affiliation.

"The campus and system saw the overall value of going to the Pac-12 because it is much more consistent with our alumni footprint and with our research collaborations," Draper said. "We do a lot with Cal. We do a lot with UCLA and Washington. We were already in joint research agreements with a lot of them. ...

"The faculty overall were pretty darn supportive of moving over to the Pac-12."

I will resist the urge to argue concepts such as opportunity costs and participatory governance to the vice chancellor, but suffice it to say that her comments were not well received by at least a few on the faculty.

My call for a bit more transparency here is not particularly radical -- we should simply to treat athletics in a manner comparable to other organizations under university governance.  Here is another excerpt from the op-ed:

CU-Boulder is like most major universities in that revenue-raising activities that involve entertainment are common parts of our incredibly wide-ranging portfolio of activities, which include the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Artist Series from the College of Music. And of course, almost all of the research done on campus is funded through external sources based on then entrepreneurial successes of the faculty. So athletics is not unique in its need to raise funds to operate.

Similarly, the athletic department is not unique on campus in receiving subsidies from elsewhere on campus. Last year, the Law School spent $1.7 million more than it took in, and the College of Music $4.4 million and the College of Engineering $6.1 million. Such deficits are problematic because there is not a lot of money to go around. Over 2007-2012, state support to higher education in Colorado dropped by 13 percent, according to data from Illinois State University, and faculty recently went several years without raises.

With respect to the Law School deficit Regent Steve Bosley said, "The law students -- as a body -- are probably going to make more money than any other group on campus. Why should the other students be subsidizing a group that has a greater lifetime earning?" The same question might be asked of the campus subsidy to athletics, given that those resources are going to a tiny subset of students.

Decision making related to athletics is typically kept far from the faculty, and operates from within its own cocoon within the university bureaucracy. I am surely typical of most of my peers on the faculty in learning of the most recent gift and loan to the athletic department via the pages of the Daily Camera. This separation may make sense as big-time college athletics -- specifically men's football and basketball -- today have far more in common with their professional counterparts than with faculty in various departments on campus.

Yet, even as we recognize the tradition, uniqueness and importance of college athletics, it is precisely because of these values that the enterprise should be opened up to a greater degree of transparency and accountability in the broader university environment. CU is far from alone in this regard, but like others across the nation, has a long way to go.

Read the whole op-ed here.

Analysis of Compensation in the MLS

The availability of a dataset on compensation of MLS players allows for a interesting analysis of league-wide compensation (data here in PDF).  The figure above shows the distribution of "2012 Guaranteed Compensation" for MLS players, with the lowest paid players on the left and the highest on the right (there are 549 players in the dataset). You can click on the figures in this post for a better view.

You can see that it is a rather skewed distribution. The graph below shows the salaries of those players who make less than $1 million (which is almost all of them), and it is still skewed.

The average salary in the MLS is $164,000 but the median is only $80,000. The lowest compensated player is $33,625 and the highest (Thierry Henry) is at $5,600,000. There are 328 players who make $100,000 or less.

The graph below shows the distribution of compensation against the league total, which is almost exactly $90 million. It shows that 50% of the league's compensation goes to 492 players and the other 50% of compensation goes to 47 players.

You are probably wondering how the MLS stacks up in terms of its Gini coefficient, a measure of income  (in)equality. That is shown in the graph below (from this excellent online calculator). It shows that the MLS has a level of inequality that might be comparable to Haiti or Bolivia, and much higher level of inequality than found in men's professional tennis. It would be interesting to compare across sports, countries and leagues, but that would necessitate a big data collection effort.

Shelter from the Storm

What a difference a year makes ... or not.

Here is Sepp Blatter at the 2011 FIFA Congress:

“I am the captain, we will weather the storm together”

Here is Blatter at the 2012 FIFA Congress:

"We are back in the harbor…and are heading to calm, clearer waters"

Debate question of the day: Has FIFA's reform effort succeeded? Or has it provided cover for inaction?

Lasana Liburd: "the Caribbean's Answer to Bob Woodward"

I have come to learn that not many people pay much attention to sports governance. Among those who do are a set of investigative reporters who do their profession proud. Among them is Lasana Liburd (pictured above, interviewing Mario Goijman) who writes on football (soccer) from Trinidad at Wired868.com.

Writing at ESPNStar, Jesse Fink highlights Liburd's efforts in exposing corruption in CONCACAF, the federation which oversees Central and North American Soccer, as well as the Caribbean.  Here is an excerpt:

Oh, to be Jack Warner.

Must be wonderful being fawned over by underlings, fanned by tropical breezes, knowing that in Trinidad, his island home, he's practically a king.

Who dares take on Teflon Jack? Who would be so foolish?

Well, there is one man.

The Minister of Works and Infrastructure of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad & Tobago, a former FIFA executive committee member, stand-in deputy prime minister and president of CONCACAF, has been linked to all sorts of sagas over the years, each of them chronicled by the Caribbean's answer to Bob Woodward, Lasana Liburd, an online newspaper journalist and publisher in Trinidad.

I have followed Liburd's reporting closely, and it is consistently meticulous, patient and revealing, often going where others fear to go.

Fink's praise is well earned:

[F]ans should be just as appreciative of the work of Liburd. He's a true ornament to the profession of journalism.

Committed. Resourceful. Fearless.

We all owe him our greatest respect and thanks for doing more than FIFA ever has in the name of "fair play".

Count me among those fans. Lasana, keep up the good work!

You can follow Liburd at @lasanaliburd and Wired868.com.