Newmark's Door

Microeconomics wins again.

So while outright collusion among owners is certainly possible, it isn’t necessary to explain what’s going on. It’s far more likely that what we’re seeing in recent winters is simply the hard cold math resulting from a mismatch between how much money each team is raking in overall and how much of that revenue each individual player can lay claim to being responsible for.

“A lot of us in academia wrote about that and actually told the players’ association that that was going to be the effect,” says Stanford sports economist Roger Noll. “And they didn’t really believe us, because they thought that salaries were driven simply by total income, not by the increment to income driven by a player.”

(Link via Marginal Revolution.)

A nice story. Go Pats.

The one and only Leo doing his amazing thing. (With short video clip.)

Related: "10 Biggest Matches Ever Decided by Lionel Messi Alone" and "49 quotes on Messi" (quite a collection).

They said yesterday on the broadcast of KC's game that a bunch of experts had had Mahomes as a 3rd round pick. As almost always, personnel is very imperfect science.

What's true of New York City is probably true of lots of other cities, too.

Interesting piece about the Redskins's widely despised owner. But I dispute the thesis: if Snyder is only interesting in money, shouldn't somebody have bought him out by now? 

One data point in support: another widely despised owner, James Dolan of Knicks, Rangers, and Liberty, says he would be open to the "right" offer.

Not a good idea.

Interesting, and since it's their favorites it's not, strictly speaking, incorrect. But c'mon. Tua to Smith is #1--not #3--by a huge margin. Ovi and the Cup is #2, not #7. And Jalen against the Dawgs is, rather than inexplicably omitted altogether, #3.

UPDATE: Link fixed now.

ESPN ranks the "most dominant athletes of 2018 ".

Nine minutes of Barca magic.