The Sports Economist

Elliott said after the race that, for the first time this spring, Smarty Jones wasn't relaxing in the early stages of the race. "I thought if I could get a clear lead, maybe he'd relax," the veteran rider said. "I was planning on getting away with an easy eighth or quarter [of a mile], but it didn't happen."

Servis saw it the same way, and manfully accepted the blame -- deflecting any potential criticism of his rider. "I worked really hard to take the edge off him, but it obviously didn't work. If he had settled, we would have had a Triple Crown winner."

The films of the race seem to confirm Servis's interpretation. When Elliott went to the lead on the backstretch, he wasn't pushing and shoving aggressively; Smarty Jones wanted to go, and Elliott had little choice but to let him.

If anybody's failing cost Smarty Jones the Triple Crown, it was not Elliott and Servis, but the beloved horse himself. Smarty Jones had accomplished his triumphs in the Derby and Preakness by overcoming his pedigree; he is the son of a miler, and his female family is dominated by sprinters and milers.

"I knew when we turned on the backside that we were in a little bit of trouble," Servis said. "He just wasn't settling as nice as he had in the previous two races. He was dragging Stew out of the saddle. I had a bad feeling. You can't do that and get a mile and a half."

Smarty's reputation as one of the strongest Triple Crown candidates in years worked against him, as both Rock Hard Ten and Eddington pressured him in the early stages of the 1 1/2-mile marathon, the longest of the three Triple Crown races.

"We thought the only way we could beat Smarty Jones was to bring the race at him," said Mark Hennig, trainer of Eddington, who finished fourth, a dozen lengths behind the winner.

The tactic worked, though not for those who employed it. Smarty Jones withstood challenges from Eddington and Rock Hard Ten after he stuck his nose in front halfway up the backstretch, then he put them away turning for home.

But there was no rest to be had in the last quarter mile to glory.

The pace comes into play a lot more dramatically than it would in any other race," Servis said. Because we have a bull's-eye on our back, more than any race this is where Stewart's really going to have to shine. There are eight other horses in there that really don't have anything to lose and a lot to gain.

ON THE SCREEN The commercial opens with an aerial view of the Empire State Building, dissolving to a view of the far West Side of Manhattan as a graphic alerts viewers to "important economic facts." The words "18,000 construction jobs" and "6,900 permanent jobs" flash on the screen as images of schools, a construction site and a police officer are interspersed with animated images of the proposed stadium. The advertisement ends with a dramatic animated view of the stadium from the water, with fireworks exploding overhead.

It is far from clear how many construction workers will be employed and for how long, but "6,900 permanent jobs" appears to be aggressively optimistic. Giants Stadium in New Jersey, the Jets' current home, has only about 95 permanent employees; another 935 people are brought in 20 times a year for football games. And the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center employs the equivalent of 920 full-time workers.

``I've never seen one before. They're really beautiful,'' said Miao Wenchang, a Shanghai office worker. Beaming with pride, he said, ``China really has a lot of rich people now.''

This time of year tends to bring to mind memories of Summer Camp and of lazing in the warm sunshine listening to the gentle slap of the river against the bottom of a boat. In my daydreams, I am back on the river, back in a boat, enjoying the company of good friends and cool beverages.

Now, I'm not the type to daydream anything half-way. I need to feed my daydream. I need to make it a little more concrete and detailed. I need a specific boat to include in my little mental painting. This leads me to eBay, the site where daydreams become reality.

One day in Louisville, talking with a reporter he trusted, Servis said he'd level if the tape recorder was turned off. That's when Servis said: "In three races, they're going to be talking about a colt who's very, very special."

Manuel Martinez , a publicist for the Tigers, said professional baseball faces a stark reality.

"The average Mexican makes 70 pesos ($6.25) a day, and we have 54 home games a year," Martinez said. "There will be a home soccer game once every two weeks. They will save for the 60 pesos to go to the one soccer game, but there's not enough money to go around for so many baseball games. We've tried everything we can think of, like nights when women get in free, 20-peso ticket nights and many other promotions, but we're running up against the economic realities here."

- The athletic department will be integrated with other academic departments to reduce its autonomy. The athletic director will no longer report to the chancellor, but to the provost. The provost is the chief academic officer for the school and reports to the chancellor.

- The provost will develop and oversee athletic department policies guiding academic decisions, such as admissions, financial aid, eligibility, progress toward graduation and academic support - with the advice and counsel of the Academic Policy Board.

- The vice chancellor for administration will review and approve athletic contracts and sponsorships - a job now done by the athletic director.

- The athletic department's compliance officer will take on new duties related to monitoring athletic compliance with campus policies and practices.

Q -- If you win the Belmont, you will become the leading money earner of all time in thoroughbred racing, thanks to $10 million in bonus money. What do you think of that?

A -- I need an agent. I haven't seen any of that money. All I want is one of those plasma TV's in my stall, and maybe some extra oats and peppermints. Is that too much to ask?

Q -- What's your favorite snack?

A -- Lion Heart. Sorry he's going to miss the Belmont.

Q -- What do you hope to do after the Belmont?

A -- Win a bunch more races, retire at 4 and go to stud. I'm not ready to think about retirement yet, but the idea of people bringing you fillies every day for a couple of months sounds pretty darned appealing.

Smarty's accomplishments so far are impressive enough. If he wins on Saturday, he will be just the second horse to emerge from the Triple Crown undefeated (Seattle Slew was the other).

He has won at eight different distances on five different tracks, all with jockey Stewart Elliot aboard. Only one horse has finished closer than a 1 1/2 lengths to Smarty. His win in the Derby was visually impressive, as he dominated a good field on a sloppy track.

But the Preakness was a race for the ages. In that race, Smarty took control on the turn and drew off to an 11 1/2-length victory, the largest margin in the history of the race.

But that doesn't even begin to tell the story of how impressive he was that day. The final time of 1:55.59 was faster than the 1:55.89 run the day before in the Pimlico Special for older horses. That race was won by Southern Image, a 4-year-old who has won five straight and emerged as one of the best older horses in the country. In addition, the Pimlico surface was playing slightly faster on Special day than Preakness day.

The Beyer speed figure for Smarty Jones' Preakness was 118, the highest in a Triple Crown race since Easy Goer's 122 in the 1989 Belmont, which was the second-fastest Belmont ever run.

Globeform (www.globeform.com), an international racing service, gave Smarty Jones a 141 rating for his Preakness. It is the highest number ever given by the service. According to the Web site, Smarty "is the best horse since Globeform ratings were introduced in 1990."

That's the best in the world over that period.

Players have never gotten credit for all the work they do (to become better, stronger athletes)... People want to attribute success not to hard work, but to cutting corners. And that's ridiculous. We live in an age now where guys are working out year-round, constantly, every single day.

When a curveball leaves the pitcher's fingers it has topspin, which means the top of the ball rotates in the direction of flight (toward the plate). Fastballs, in contrast, have backspin, with the bottom of the ball rotating in the direction of flight. Topspin causes a ball to experience a downward force, because the rotation changes the distribution of air pressure around the ball so there is more pressing down on the ball than up. Hence curveballs' habit of suddenly plunging, to batters' dismay. Backspin, in contrast, generates an upward force, somewhat like the one that keeps an airplane aloft, which is why a fastball rises unless the pitcher gives it a countervailing spin.

When the bat makes contact, the most obvious thing it does is reverse the ball's direction, so it heads toward the field rather than the plate. But contact also changes the ball's spin. Assuming good contact in each case, a fastball that arrived with backspin therefore leaves with topspin, while a curveball arriving with topspin leaves with additional backspin and thus more home run potential.

"A curveball already has batted backspin," says Prof. Hubbard. "With a fastball, in order to give it backspin and let it benefit from aerodynamics, you have to reverse the spin," which is tough to do. The well-hit curveball heads for the field with more of the kind of spin that gives it fence-clearing lift and distance.

The Flames were unable to explain their loss of intensity; much the same way as the Lightning couldn't after Game 1. In the end, about all they could muster were the usual send-a-message fisticuffs that prolonged the inevitable and sullied the end of the game.

'It's the Stanley Cup finals. We expect it to be intense,' said Warrener, explaining away the late-game encounters. 'It kind of boiled over in the third. So what. It's part of hockey. When a guy slew-foots our goalie, we've got to do something.'

Warrener pinned the act on Lightning instigator Andre Roy. Sutter said he didn't see it, as he says after pretty much all of these kinds of incidents since he was fined for creating one late in the regular season."

"There is an allegation that one company in order to protect their own commercial interest is trying to stop jobs coming to this city. That's an outrage, nobody's going to pay any attention to it and if that's the only opposition we have to doing what's right for this city, then we're in great shape."

New York nonprofit law .. requires compensation to be reasonable and commensurate with services performed. We'll see what a court has to say about that. The NYSE may be organized as a nonprofit, but somebody might take a look at the vast revenues that flowed through the exchange for the benefit of its seat owners, the real pot of money Mr. Grasso was charged with guarding.

In fact, the NYSE makes a lousy proxy for concerns about corporate compensation. It represents a completely different kettle of guppies than the typical Berle & Means quandary of dispersed, impotent owners and all-powerful, unaccountable management. The NYSE is owned by seat holders who show up on the premises every business day. Their livelihood depends on the place. They elect its board. They know what a telephone is for. They have every means and incentive to wield their collective clout to make sure their interests are being served.

Now some NYSE "specialist" firms will tell you they were afraid of Mr. Grasso; they didn't really know what was going on. If pressed on why they bungled a matter so close to their own interests, they shrug their shoulders like an errant teenager and say they aren't sure why they didn't keep a closer check on things.

So we'll answer for them: They stood back because Mr. Grasso was serving their needs marvelously. Consider the years 1995 through 2000, when the handful of small, little-known businesses that control floor trading pocketed profits of $2.12 billion. The average yearly return on their invested capital: a princely 21.35%. Mr. Grasso's retirement payoff after 35 years at the exchange may have been gross and unsightly, but it was a small fraction of the riches he helped to preserve for the New York Stock Exchange's most privileged constituents....

For his part, Mr. Spitzer has intimated that he didn't really want any part of the Grasso mess; it was dropped in his lap by John Reed. We have no trouble believing it. New York's Attorney General, heir to a local real estate fortune, has specialized in presenting his wealthy business targets with both a problem and a solution, the latter involving writing a big check with their firm's money. He may not exactly provoke gratitude (except among CEOs more than usually afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome) but he's seen as someone with whom business can be done.

His political ambition is zeppelin-like, lurching over Manhattan in unmoored, alarming fashion. He was obviously eager here to limit his political risk by portraying the NYSE's famous board as victims rather than culprits in the Grasso pay scandal. But no judge or jury will fail to understand that he's giving them a pass for his own political interests.

Mr. Grasso understands this too, and has semaphored that he will drag them into court, forcing them to choose between pleading gullibility, inattention and incompetence or undermining Mr. Spitzer's case. True, even a court victory might not get Mr. Grasso his good name back, but more than a few would applaud his show of resistance to a budding demagogue.

NOW that the shortlist for the 2012 Olympics has been announced, there will be a great banging of national drums as statesmen and sportsmen in London, Paris, Moscow, Madrid and New York unite to make their case. The Economist would like to make its case, too: please, please can we not have the Olympics in our home town...

There is little doubt that London could do the Olympics proud if it got them. What is less clear is whether spending a couple of billion pounds of public money on having an extra half a million people in town for a few weeks sounds like fun...

The economic case for holding the Games in London rests on two ideas: first, that they will lead to a lot of investment from which the host country will benefit for years to come; second, that they will bring an economic boom. Neither stands up to much scrutiny.

The Olympics may well lead to investment that would not otherwise happen. The question is whether it should. If neither private nor public sectors have yet got round to building an Olympic-size stadium or swimming pool in London, nor to regenerating the lower Lea Valley (site of the proposed Olympic village), that is probably because those projects don't make economic sense. Holding the Olympics doesn't much improve the economic case for them, as the expected £2.4 billion ($4.2 billion) public subsidy suggests.

As to the economic boost the Olympics could bring, that argument may wash in a second-level city seeking to win attention for its nascent tourist industry or to mop up a labour surplus (such as Barcelona). But London is already on the tourist and economic maps. Conditions on its sardine-packed underground argue against the flood of extra travellers the Olympics would bring. Its labour market is already tight (unemployment in the city is running at 3.5%) and anybody who has recently tried to get a builder may question the need for an injection of demand into the construction industry.

But if taxpayers and commuters are unlikely to benefit, there is one class of people that relishes the idea of holding a big party and sending the bill to the exchequer: the politicians, in particular London's left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone. Getting the Games would give him an excuse for slapping an extra charge on the council tax and extracting more money from the Treasury. Let us hope that the International Olympic Committee does not indulge him.

Luckily, London seems unlikely to win. Paris is the bookies' favourite by some distance. In the traditional spirit of Anglo-French feeling, we pray that it will triumph.

In the context of this collective bargaining relationship, the NFL and its players union can agree that an employee will not be hired or considered for employment for nearly any reason whatsoever [emphasis added] so long as they do not violate federal laws such as those prohibiting unfair labor practices ... or discrimination.

[E]ight years ago Wenger had to prove himself. The Arsenal dressing room had proved too big for Rioch [former manager] to handle, so how did the Frenchman with the funny accent and the oddly apposite Christian name go about beginning his overhaul of the club?

'He intellectualised to the players,' Dein [the vice-chairman] explained over lunch last week. Come again? 'The biggest problem for any manager nowadays is motivating multimillionaires. Arsene reminded the players it said professional footballer on their passports and invited them to behave like professionals and be the best. He told them they could carry on with the burgers and the lager and end up in the Third Division, or adopt his philosophy, extend their careers at the top level and make a few million quid. They listened to that. It's no secret that Arsene was not impressed with the culture he inherited. So he changed it, revolutionising the club and setting new standards in English football.

'Everyone is at it now, the diet and so on, but that's fair enough. We progress when we all learn from each other. If you ask Steve Bould or Tony Adams, or Martin Keown who is still up for another Premiership contract at the age of 37, they are all physically and mentally in good shape. Mentally is very important these days, it is not just a physical game any more. That's why a lot of clubs employ sports psychologists. We don't need one, Arsene does the job.'

That would be in addition to Arsene's other jobs of making Manchester United's life a misery, scouting opponents, sourcing top talent from all over the globe and transforming players discarded by other clubs into world-beaters. Dein does not like to boast, you understand, but he can quote a few statistics.

There are 10 nationalities in the current first-team squad. There have been 102 first-team comings and goings under Wenger, at an overall transfer deficit of £40million. That averages out at around £5m per season - not bad given the success rate and the fact that Arsenal made £56m from television and prize money this season alone.

Six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress approved an $8 billion program to repair this city's damaged office towers, build apartment buildings and finance the rebirth of the financial district.

But two years later, city records show that much of the money, dubbed Liberty Bonds, has gone to developers of prime real estate in midtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and to builders of luxury housing.

Local and state officials -- over the objections of their own downtown development chief -- gave one developer $650 million from the Liberty Bonds to erect an office tower for the Bank of America near Times Square, miles from the shattered precincts of Ground Zero. According to city records, another developer got $113 million to build a tower for Bank of New York in Brooklyn. One of the few projects downtown has gone to actor and sometime developer Robert De Niro, who picked up nearly $39 million from the bonds in November to build a boutique hotel in Tribeca, directly north of Ground Zero.

Congress designated $1.6 billion of the Liberty Bonds for rental housing. Nearly all the money from those bonds has gone to prominent developers to build luxury apartment towers in the neighborhoods around Ground Zero, accelerating its transformation into one of New York's richest neighborhoods, the city records show.

Today three-bedroom apartments near Ground Zero rent for $6,500 a month -- and sell for more than $1 million. Manhattan residential occupancy rates -- more than 95 percent -- are higher than before the terrorist attacks, according to real estate statistics.

Yet the state and city agencies that award the bonds -- the New York State Housing Finance Agency and New York City Housing Development Corp. -- awarded nearly all the residential Liberty Bonds to subsidize the rental market.

Common Cause New York reported that 30 percent of the state's residential share of Liberty Bond proceeds went to Leonard Litwin, who is a major campaign contributor to Pataki.

State housing officials said that political favoritism played no part in their decisions and that loans were handed out "on a first-come, first-served basis." Litwin, they say, had projects in the works and simply got in line when the Liberty Bonds came available.

Google has succeeded for a simple reason: It regularly finds the Web pages that are most valuable and puts them at the top of the list. The heart of the technology that lets it do this is the PageRank algorithm (after cofounder Larry E. Page), which essentially asks Web page producers to vote on which other pages are most worthwhile. Each link to a page counts as a vote. Google is a republic, rather than a pure democracy; sites that have more links into them are effectively given more voting power. But the principle is fundamentally democratic--let the masses decide. Given the Wild West nature of the Web, you'd think that this would lead to chaos or irrationality. Instead, it leads to a remarkable order.

How does this work? What Google is relying on is something I call the wisdom of crowds: Under the right circumstances, groups are smarter, make better decisions and are better at solving problems than even the smartest people within them. On any one problem a few people may outperform the group. But over time collective wisdom is near-impossible to beat. No one, you might say, knows more than everyone....

The wisdom of crowds can be seen at the racetrack, where the odds on horses coincide very nicely with their probability of winning. (That is, if you look at a large collection of horses that went off at 4-1 odds, you find that 20% won.) And, of course, collective wisdom is also at work in markets, which is why it's so hard to outperform the market over time. Just as Google's PageRank encapsulates the knowledge of Web users, so does a market price embody, as the economist Friedrich Hayek suggested, all of the tacit knowledge and wisdom of investors and traders.

"I wasn't really that concerned about it, to be honest with you," said Berkman, who led Rice to its first College World Series appearance in 1997. "There's no reason for Rice to drop football or ever go from Division I."

Berkman, who attended Rice from 1995-97, wasn't surprised there was a small faction at Rice who wanted to reduce the role athletics plays at the school.

"I think one thing that nobody's mentioned so far is that Rice is in Texas, and you're not going to be in Texas without people being avid sports fans," he said. "That's just part of our culture. It's just unrealistic to expect that we're going to be some purely academic institution in an Ivy League environment when you have to exist in the environment that you're a part of."