Will this cause all NCAA hell to break loose? I hope so.

I saw this article in the NYT this morning and thought it was pretty good.

On Campus, It's One Big Commerical

Despite being the paper of record, the New York Times is usually late on what's actually going on in culture and style. When I started college four years ago, these types of practices existed various. None of them were as integrated as the Target/UNC relationship, but this is not a new "issue" as the NYT and UNC frame it.

I say "issue" because this article makes it sound like a potential problem. In a shocking twist, the establishment is worried about the college student becoming too tied to "the man". This was my favorite portion of the article:

But Mr. Crisp says he was unaware of the American Eagle effort on his campus. He worried aloud that students and parents might mistake such promotions as having the university’s imprimatur.

“They are not supposed to be using the opportunity to help people move in as a way of forwarding commercial ventures,” he said, standing near the cash registers at Target that evening, as upperclassmen handed out free VitaminWater, Combos and packages of macaroni and cheese.  

This is classic. The university is fine with companies being involved as long as the university is getting a cut. Crisp has another follow up quote:

 “I don’t think we have a good grip on it,” Mr. Crisp says. “We are going to need to get a good grip on it.”  The challenge, he says, is to balance potential student employment opportunities against practices that could manipulate undergraduates or dilute the U.N.C. experience.

Earlier in the article, the Target event was described as:

Over the course of the evening, about 2,200 Carolina students make their way through the aisles. Mr. Crisp describes the party as the school’s “signature event” for the start of the school year.

I don't know anyone who went to UNC ten years ago, but I'd guess they'd be appalled to know that the signature Freshmen event is basically a giant party at Target, sponsored by Target. New traditions need to start and I don't have a problem with companies playing in role in new traditions. It's laughable that the University feels like it needs to be the one to decide what brands are permitted to help form the new traditions (and pay the university), but that students, the ones paying an arm and leg for tuition (and in most cases the tradition/name brand of the school) and actually attending the school, shouldn't be allowed to. Back to Crisp:

“How we police that and how we deal with our students, who after all are our students, is probably something we need to spend some more time thinking about.”

The more interesting aspect of this story is how these types of relationships would be treated by the NCAA. The article says that companies are seeking students, "involved in athletics, music, fraternities or sororities" and that these students, "can earn several hundred to several thousand dollars a semester in salary, perks, products and services, depending on the company." Uh oh. 


If non-athletes are allowed to engage in these relationships with no bound to compensation, why wouldn't athletes? What would stop Nike, Adidas, or a non-athletic brand from approaching Heisman Candidate X with an offer to provide him with products or payment in return for his advancing the brand? I'm guessing the NCAA would argue that the athlete is using his or her status as an athlete to better himself or herself. As we know, only the NCAA and the school are allowed to make money off the athletes. If an non-athlete student is President of a major fraternity or is that person who friended everyone in the class freshman year, who will stop them from parlaying that status into compensation? No one. I would love to see this scenario play out. 

NFL Survivor Week 1 Update

Just a quick update to my survivor strategy going into Week 1. Obviously the big news in the NFL is that Peyton Manning is out indefinitely. This has repercussions on the whole strategy as I had planned on using the Colts in Week 12. The Week 1 line for the Texans-Colts game has also changed drastically: With Manning the line would be Colts -3/4, without him it's Texans -10. Here are the changes.

Week 1: Texans
Week 12: San Diego (Former Week 1 team)
Week 15: New York Giants (Replacing Texans)

NFL Survivor Week 1

Survival pools are one of my favorite things to do during the NFL season. I compete in the simplest variety- pick one team to win straight up each week (of course the team can't be used more than once). More competitive pools force contestants to pick two teams and in some cases the team(s) must win against the spread.

For my purposes, I have a clear strategy that I've used the past two years. I compile an Excel spreadsheet of all the point spreads for each game of the season, then I find the combination of picks that fit the criteria (one team per week, only use each team once) that maximizes the number of points I have in my favor over the course of the season. This is the perfect thing to use the Excel Solver add on, but the free version won't accept this many inputs and I don't want to pay $200 for the paid version; I think I do a good enough job eyeballing it.

Here's my strategy going into week 1:


A couple of notes:

• Just pick whoever is playing the Cardinals or Panthers. 
• Every division is picked except the NFC West which is picked against. 
• It's looking more and more like Peyton Manning won't play in Week 1 vs Houston. The game has been taken off the board. Once Manning's status is clear, the Texans could be in the mix for the week 1 selection. 
• Looking at every single point spread is a good exercise. For example, the Bengals, my week 16 selection, are favored by seven points in that game against the Cardinals. I don't think the Bengals should be favored by seven points against a high school team. They'll probably win because the Cardinals won't be very good, but I except that line to be much tighter come kickoff. 

StarStreet

I first heard about StarStreet at the MIT Sports Analytics Conference in March. Some of you may remember Protrade; StarStreet is trying to do the same thing except it uses real money. When StarStreet first started trading, there was no backing to the players. It made no sense. The only way to make money was to buy a player and hope the site grew and people would want to buy popular players. It seemed like a short lived idea and within a month or two, the market had stalled because the site had stopped growing. I know of at least one person who made money though.

On August 1st, StarStreet announced a new valuation system based on player performance (here). There is still one aspect I'm a little unclear about and that's the idea of proportional value. In the actual stock market everything can go down or up independently of each other. If Apple blows out its earnings report, if will go up even if Cisco does too. For StarStreet, if Jose Bautista hits three home runs, he will only go up if the other offered players do not increase their value to the same extent.

Since the new valuation system was started with around 100 games of data, the final payouts based on relative fantasy points were already priced into the StarStreet determined IPO. The only way a player could see a substantial change in value would be an injury and since StarStreet doesn't allow short sales (yet?), there's no way to make money off that.

Nevertheless, here is a chart of the StarStreet offered players with their final projected price vs. last traded price. I used the ZiPS RoS projections available at Fangraphs.



It's not surprising to see the players (Ubaldo and Liriano) with good track records but underperforming this season be projected to return the most value. As I write this, Ubaldo is getting shelled in Detroit so I wouldn't go buying his shares just yet. As I wrote above, I wouldn't expected any drastic returns from the MLB market.

NFL Season

With the lockout over, I guess I have to get back into football. I'll have a large post about survivor pool strategy coming up later this week, but I thought I'd throw up some basic stuff. I used Sbet's lines for each game this season.

First, here is a ranking of the teams based on average point spread. This DOES NOT represent who the best team is; rather, it is a combination of team skill and strength of schedule.


Next, projected wins for each team based on the individual game spreads vs. win totals offered at Sbet .


I used a difference of two wins to determine which were favorable bets.

Updated MLB Season Wins Totals

Forgot to post yesterday.

• At this point, it's tough to bet against the Phillies, despite what the numbers say. 
• Betting against the Pirates to finish .500 seems solid. 
• As of 7/27, the Dodgers have the #2 pitcher and hitter in the NL by WAR. I think the over is a good play. 

Updated MLB Season Wins Totals

I'm working on a bigger post that looks at the changes in each team's total over the course of the season. That might go up tomorrow, but more likely Thursday. Here is the traditional update post.



There's a lot of red on the board as the lines are set with the team's full season expectations in line. If you buy into the Pirates (I don't) now is your chance to get a good number on them. It's hard to imagine the Dodgers continuing to play this poorly. Based on the line, they are projected to finish last in the NL West.