How do events from our childhood shape our adult preferences? I recently studied this question using a classic American example: baseball. I tested how a team’s performance at every age of our childhood affects which team we root for as adults. From Facebook’s publicly available advertising platform, I downloaded data […] Read more »
Race Impacts Decision Not to Pay College Athletes, Say More than Three in Ten
Despite the money top college men’s basketball and football programs generate, college athletes are not paid, and 31% of Americans believe there is some truth to the argument that this is because many student athletes are African American. CONT. HBO Real Sports/Marist Read more »
Pastime – Opening Day 2014
It’s time again to talk about the National Pastime. Baseball season is starting this coming week. (I know that there was a quasi-start in Australia on March 22-23 with two Dodger wins; that doesn’t count.) Back in one of baseball’s Golden Ages, the 1950s, there seemed little debate about what […] Read more »
Public Divides on College Players Union But Most Nix Salaries for Student Athletes
With March Madness focusing fans on college sports, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds Americans split evenly on whether college athletes should be allowed to unionize. But most, regardless, say students shouldn’t be paid to play. The public divides by 47-47 percent on whether student athletes should be able […] Read more »
Large majority opposes paying NCAA athletes
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that a large majority of the general public opposes paying salaries to college athletes beyond the scholarships currently offered. Only 33 percent support paying college athletes. At 64 percent, opposition is nearly twice as high as support, with 47 percent strongly against the […] Read more »
Can Sports Teams Really Have Momentum?
ESPN commentators will often insist that such-and-such team has such-and-such “momentum,” so really, there’s not much of a question when it comes to tonight’s game. Behavioral economists have long attempted to figure out whether this clichéd concept that sports fans have long endeared themselves to can actually, statistically, be a […] Read more »