Game Theory
Five lessons on politics and economics to be learned from the world of sports
M. Harrison

The NFL: Losing is a state of mind (but the best cure is hard work and success)

Our NFL case study is the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals, for the longest time, were simply the worst team in football, and maybe in all of sports. They had been atrocious for so long that the word "Bengal" directly evoked thoughts of sub-par performance in the mind of the seasoned NFL fan. Many of us would be caught saying things like, "Wow dude, that movie sucked like the Bengals," understandably forgetting that the word is really the name of a mere NFL franchise, and not a synonym for perpetual failure. (See Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a similar background story.)

But the Bengals are good now. They've actually made the playoffs recently, and probably will be good again this year. This type of self-improvement is what all losers can and should do in a competitive market - get better and win. The Bengals hired a new coaching staff, drafted quality new players, and improved their strategy. Their success is one of old-fashioned, boot-strapping innovation.

Global capitalism and free trade creates winners and losers too, although the losers are unfortunately not usually as resourceful as the Bengals. American farmers come to mind, as they attempt to hide from foreign competition under the maternal skirt of U.S. trade restrictions. But American farmers could win too like the Bengals, if they were to actually embrace the fact no one wants to buy their corn for so much more than what it costs in Guangdong and successfully compete, or else actually do something at which they could be successful.

But they don't. They just clamor for subsidies and other government bail-outs - because they think it's unfair that they lose. This would be like if the Bengals, instead of drafting Carson Palmer, successfully lobbied the NFL to give them a two-touchdown handicap in every game. Under this football-socialism, the Bengals would still suck, and the level of talent in the NFL as a whole would stagnate. So will the American economy stagnate if its losers don't work harder at winning, instead of lamely trying to get paid for more losing.

Baseball: Mistakes - yours and everyone else's - are part of life

Many commentators a lot less insightful than those working at this organization have long noted that, unique to baseball, a 33% success rate (i.e. batting average) is considered extraordinarily good. They use this datum to impart various life lessons about perserverence and self-confidence. It's all true, but it isn't the best lesson to learn from baseball.

Baseball is a game steeped in intentional imperfection, allowing mistakes and random circumstance to profoundly affect a game's outcome. The MLB is completely aware of the technology that could replace umpires with computers to determine the exact location of a pitch relative to the plate, or cameras to perfectly determine the exact timing of a throw to first base relative to the baserunner. Such technology, undeniably, would make the game more "fair." Instant replay alone in baseball could replace umpires and ensure near-perfect game calling, since nearly all baseball calls are objective rather than subjective. But baseball refuses. It will always allow its umpires ultimate discretion with no technological oversight. It is understood these human umpires will always make mistakes, but these mistakes are part of the game of baseball.

Additionally, likely to the consternation of feminists everywhere, baseball's playing field itself is never "equal." A 385-foot fly ball to left field is a home run or an out, depending on the stadium in which your team happens to be playing on any given day. A squarely-hit, 300-foot line drive to center can find the glove of the center fielder for an out, while a less-squarely hit ball to left-center can bounce off the wall as a double.

But these frustrating vagaries are what make baseball what it is. A player can do everything right and still get called out on an umpire's empirically-verified bad call. Five perfect swings with excellent contact can make outs and result in an 0-5 day, while an opponent can go 4-4, collecting RBIs off of Texas League singles. A player can bounce a ball off of the Green Monster that would have been in the parking lot of Angel Stadium. Ad infinitum.

These unpredictable events also make life what it is. The best-prepared, best-educated, and hardest-working individual fail because of bad luck, being victim to his surroundings, or having one's superiors making errors in judgement. Both in baseball and life, the best solution is preparation, not regulation.

Life isn't fair, but the best remedy against it still is raw skill. Remember, no matter how bad the umpiring is, you still can't get called out on a home run.

The NHL: Purists and idealists don't pay the bills

The two aspects of NHL hockey with the most public appeal are the bane of true hockey purists: fighting and open-ice scoring. In fact, NHL ratings are so low that the fighting is really all that keeps fans going to games. To give them another, the NHL just stabbed another knife into the stomachs of its purist supporters by substantially modifying the rules of the game in order to encourage more scoring.

What hockey purists like to see, as it turns out, just isn't popular. This is the general way of the market. What is generally viewed as desirable by elite groups is not what sells big. This is why NPR will never make any money. This is also why the #1 pop single on the Billboard chart is usually utter crap.

This is also why hockey needs to adjust its rules to stay profitable. Hockey purists who wish to see soccer-esque 1-0 NHL games are welcome to start their own professional league. They should not be surprised, however, when their league garners the attendance and TV ratings of, well, soccer.

The NBA: Equal representation? No thanks

Most of the best NBA players are black. Not all of them are, of course. MVP Steve Nash is white, and so is the equally-talented Dirk Nowitski. But among all NBA players, the percentage of black players vastly exceeds the percentage of black Americans in society at large.

When the percentage of black workers in a large corporation, for example, is less than the national percentage, activists from the NAACP, et. al, start sniveling that discrimination must be taking place. So seeing as whites make up 75% of the American population, but less than 10% of the NBA, we can therefore conclude that they are being discriminated against, at least according to the people who are trusted to regularly snivel about what is discrimination.

But this "discrimination" in the NBA, as we all know, is no big deal. There is no ex-Black Panther commissioner car-bombing aspiring white basketball players. It just so happens that more blacks than whites have developed their skills sufficiently to play professional basketball. There are, clearly from the aforementioned examples of Messers. Nash and Nowitski, no barriers to white success in the NBA. There just are fewer white basketball players. A similar force creates fewer black hockey players. Any sort of affirmative action programs, in the NBA or in society at large, simply distort the naturally-developed pool of talent.

Diversity, as it turns out, doesn't always produce the best talent.

Soccer: To hell with world opinion

So soccer is the world's sport, and the US hates it. Big deal. The world thinks socialized medicine is a great idea too, but it just so happens that the US is the last industrialized country to wisely avoid it.

The utter paucity of scoring in European football is anti-American in two ways, which may shed light on Americans' unique distaste for the so-called "Beautiful Game." First, scoring itself is obviously exciting, thus making soccer, compared to American alternatives, manifestly boring. Second, this lack of scoring renders a 3-0 (or even 2-0) deficit nearly insurmountable. This often quickly prevents the most American of all sporting achievements: the underdog's incredible comeback.

Those who view American exceptionalism as an aberration needing to be tuned to the rest of the world miss the point. America was founded as the exception. It was a place where, for the first time in the world, the protection of political and religious freedom was a government's first duty.

America-haters around the world, whether criticizing our exceptionalism in sports, economics or politics, should be asking themselves the same question.

"What if, just like in 1776, the world has it wrong, and America is the only one who has it right?"