And why European sports are not
America’s more capitalist sports fans commonly acknowledge that their country’s most popular sports, like the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, have several rules that would please a Scandinavian social democrat. Salary caps and luxury taxes limit how much each team can spend on players, punish those that over-spend, and close the gap between rich and poor teams. In both sports, the top draft picks typically go to the worst-performing squads from the previous year. Revenue sharing redistributes wealth among the rich and poor teams. Overall, success is punished by design, misfortune is rewarded by design, and the power of wealth is circumscribed with spending caps.
.. public policies are an echo of national history. For example, in the U.S., the legacy of the 19th century’s “open frontier” made Americans skeptical of government intrusion, while the absence of an influential socialist party after World War II made it difficult for leftist policies to take root.
.. When a soccer team performs poorly, it’s not rewarded with a high draft pick. Instead the club is relegated to a less competitive league, a mighty blow to their revenue. Meanwhile the most successful teams from lower divisions are promoted to more competitive leagues where they can earn even more money.
.. Promotions and relegations were a tailored solution to a specific problem in English soccer: the problem of chaotic abundance.
.. In English football, where there are hundreds of similarly talented squads, the promise of churn keeps those fans interested: Late-season games between bad teams take on enormous significance when a loss might lead to relegation.
.. In American football, where there are exactly 32 similarly talented teams, the promise of parity keeps those fans interested
On Kobe Bryant
WHAT STARTLES MOST about Kobe Bryant is his longevity. He has played in the NBA for twenty years. Few, if any, have played so well for so long. But longevity was also Kobe’s curse. He lasted into an era that had no use for him, an anachronism. By the time he won his last two championships, he was already being eclipsed by a player (LeBron) who was historically better.
.. What once seemed like a kind of vicious genius became what it perhaps always was: theatrical, ritualistic gestures toward a game that no one played any more, and with reason.
.. The era of analytics has not been kind to him, and histories written with the statistics in mind will be merciless. PER, VORP, plus/minus: all give us a Kobe who was never the best player in the league and often bad for his team.
.. Scrutinizers will continue to point out the selfless masters who didn’t or won’t enjoy Kobe’s long sendoff: the doe-eyed Tim Duncan; Kevin Garnett, another straight-out-of-high-school great; the tragic Steve Nash, possessed of possibly the worst haircut in the history of the sport, deprived of his ring by the infamous hip check from the malicious Robert Horry (who undeservedly has seven). These figures were transformative in a way Kobe will prove not to be.
.. He was a sociopath, and his deep-seated contempt drove him to become one of the most beautiful athletes
.. It’s curious how few post-mortems have mentioned the 2003 sexual assault case that, had it taken place in an era of social media, would have sunk his career.
A Simple Triathlon Story, Until a Reporter Went the Distance
From talking to Dan Empfield, who runs the forum as part of his larger triathlon-related business, I learned that triathletes view cutting a course — deliberately failing to run, swim or bike the whole way, and then lying about it — as the worst thing an athlete can do, far worse than doping.
Why does Goldman Sachs prefer hiring varsity college athletes?
The most important thing that you need in a bank is the ability to work other people. If you can’t work with other people, then you are useless. This means the ability to both take orders from the coach, the ability to communicate with other people, and the ability to try not to get on other people’s nerves.
The thing about team sports that you don’t get with other efforts is that you are team graded. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you can’t work with other people you fail. If it turns out that you are the only smart guy on the team, and everyone else are losers, then you have to figure out how to deal with that situation.
I don’t know of *ANY* successful traders and bankers who are lone wolf types. This is not an industry which people who can’t work with other people can survive for very long. The other thing is that people move from firm to firm a lot, but personal relationships matter a lot.
Also, it’s important that it is a team sport. Football will help you. Archery won’t.
.. I would argue that, in general, intelligent athletes bring countless intangibles to the table that your average student does not. If you went to an elite school, remember all those kids who had anxiety about staying up to date with classes, or who fail to turn things in on time, get blindsided by tests they didn’t prepare for, etc.? That rarely, if ever, happens to athletes. They have incredible time and stress management skills embedded from middle/high school on. They get work done under stress. And they don’t have panic attacks about not finishing a paper on time. Even if they procrastinate, it still gets done.