A Cheap Ticket to the Dance: Systematic Bias in College Basketball's Ratings Percentage Index

A contest model is constructed to examine the existence of conference bias in college basketball's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). Though a general RPI bias has been identified in previous literature, this is the first study to address whether the bias is random or systematic in nature. Within the theoretical model, the RPI is shown to be systematically biased against teams in high ability conferences, even when all teams play to expectation and can be transitively compared. Further, the bias can prevent the RPI from producing an ordinal mapping from revealed team ability level to the real number line. Given the longevity of the controversial RPI as the NCAA''s primary measure of team ability, these results may indicate that the NCAA is serving a demand for team heterogeneity in selecting for the NCAA Men''s Basketball Tournament.bias

Cost Reduction, Competitive Balance, and the Scheduling of Back-to-Back Games in the NBA

The NBA league office states that the playing schedule is devised to ensure competitive balance while keeping an eye towards minimizing costs. This paper examines those claims. Three years of travel data were analyzed and the results imply that the use of back-to-back road games in the NBA schedule may assist with competitive balance and that back-to-back games indeed reduce team travel costs.basketball, team sports, costs, competitive balance

Rivalries

Rivalries are a key aspect of sports, but one with few counterparts elsewhere in economic theory. In this paper rivalries are modeled as a habitual good, and complementary in fan utility with other trade between residents of team locations. Some implications for optimal team investment in rivalry capital, for league investment in competitive balance, and for the fundamental differences between rivalries in team and individual sports are derived.Rivalry, rivalries, team sports

Non-Statistical Factors Present in Successful NBA Rookies

Becoming a successful NBA rookie is a desire of many. Athletes want to be them and coaches and GM’s want to know how to predict them. What non-statistical factors are present in successful NBA rookies? This research used secondary data to show non-statistical factors that were present in successful rookies and what kind of similarities they had. They included, conference, institution, coaching, and draft position, etc... It is important to know what a successful rookie is and if there is a correlation between draft position and rookie success. The point of this research is to show the journeys that the successful rookies took before becoming successful rookies to help better understand what it takes to become a successful rookie

An End to the Odyssey: Equal Athletic Opportunities for Women

I. Preface Princess and maids delighted in that feast; then, putting off their veils, they ran and passed a ball to a rhythmic beat. 1 So Homer, c. 800 B.C., sings of Princess Nausikaa before she befriends Odysseus near a stream on the island of Skheria. Homer\u27s adventurer ac- cepts his royal rescuer\u27s game of her own without surprise. Three millen- nia later, many American colleges are still unsure how men and women can have as equal a chance to pass a ball against other colleges as to parse the epic of Odysseus and Penelope in their classrooms. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 2 which bans sex dis- crimination in all education programs that receive federal financial assistance, should have assured those opportunities. Almost a quarter-century later, however, its promise is still unfulfilled, 3 and major litigation to define its application to athletics has begun only recently. These delays have created an air of crisis, division, and anger on many campuses. Because most college presidents and athletic directors do not know what Title IX requires, they frequently overestimate the difficulties of compliance. In my experience, supporters of men\u27s collegiate teams are espe- cially likely to lack clear information, and to be frustrated with what they believe are overly rigid obligations. Yet a generation\u27s delay in enforcement has led women student-athletes and their coaches to view compliance with increasing urgency. We should be asking why equal opportunity has been so long in com- ing. When we ask instead ..

Spartan Daily, January 9, 1939

Volume 27, Issue 58https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2848/thumbnail.jp