There’s an absolutely fascinating sports case taking place at the World Championship Cyclo-Cross event where a woman named Femke Van den Driessche was found to have a motor in her bicycle. I’ve written in a general way about Performance Enhancing Drugs in the past and also about mechanical aid in regards to Oscar Pistorious and this latest incident is but an extension of those blogs.

It’s clear that Van den Driessche was on a bike that had a motor in it. It is clear people will cheat to get ahead at sports. This cannot be denied. What I want to talk about today is the impact such engineering is going to have on the sporting world and how we deal with it.

Soon replacement parts in humans will be able to perform more ably than their originals. Motors are being installed that cannot be spotted without a time-consuming inspections. Drugs that are undetectable enhance human performance. Someone will find away to make a shoe that allows a player to jump higher or run faster. Gloves will be created that track a ball in flight. The only end to the improvements that can be made is human imagination.

No sport and no player will be above suspicion. It is not just at the highest level of professional sports, your child might be beaten out on the local cross-country team by another kid who is using a technological advantage. All incredible performance will generate skepticism. Any improvement in skills will cause suspicion. It is endless and it is inevitable.

The recourse to all this is largely futile. For every bike inspected for a motor there will be an engineer figuring out a way to do it and avoid the inspection. For every PED test created to spot a drug there will be a method found to mask it.

Does this mean we should stop trying to ferret out those who break the rules? Should we just dispense with rules altogether and accept that such methods are a fact of sport?

I think these are good questions because I believe sport itself is important and a force of good in this world.

It’s good to encourage human achievement and sport is where this is often most visibly on display. I find few things in life more exhilarating than well-played sporting endeavors and astounding athletic achievement. It is disheartening to think such performances came about because one team or athlete used something to give them an advantage.

At work such improvement is considered a good thing but not so in sports. In work if you complete a job more quickly your receive rewards, but in sport everyone knows that a motor can propel a bicycle faster and a computer can play better than an unaided athlete. The point is to do so without such aid against your peers.

Therefore I think it’s a good idea to continue to fight against those who do not play by the rules. It is true that we cannot catch all the cheaters nor prevent all the cheating. It is true that every great performance in the future will be subject to innuendo, speculation, and outright accusations.

What else is there to do?

Tom Liberman

I’m a huge sports fan and love both going to the games and watching events on television. I’m here to tell you today about a pet peeve of mine. You may disagree.

The Michael Buffer effect I call it. Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuumble!!!!

The long, drawn out name during introductions with emphasis everywhere it doesn’t belong. It’s all part of an attempt to work the fans into a frenzy and I’m guessing most people like it, but it annoys me.

Yes, I’m a party-pooper. Why all the fireworks? The light shows. The screaming announcers? The pounding music. It’s marketing I suppose.

It seems to me that in the old days fans knew when to cheer on their own. Frankly, I find it a both a bit insulting and counterproductive. I know when to cheer but I find increasingly that most fans do not, they wait for the music or announcer to tell them it’s time to yell. Half the time it’s not even appropriate and yet the fans start to scream like Pavlov’s dogs at the first sign of music.

So, either I’m right or I’m a grumpy old man yelling at those durned kids. Which is it?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s an interesting story out of college football involving the Alabama Crimson Tide and the fact that the local Tuscaloosa police department pays the salaries of officers providing security at football games with no reimbursement from the University of Alabama.

On game days in Tuscaloosa the crowd in the stadium is larger than the entire town and the police department works with local Campus Police to provide security. According to records produced by the city this amounted to over half a million dollars in overtime expenses this past season.

On the whole I don’t think it makes much difference in practicality. The reason I think this is if the University pays for the service some arrangement will be made to return that revenue through tax breaks or other means.

Nevertheless, I have a strong opinion this subject.

The city is providing a service for the university for which they would otherwise have to pay. The University of Alabama would have to bolster campus police forces on game days or simply hire the police force to do the job.

The reason the city of Tuscaloosa likely provides this service is that they get far more than half a million dollars in revenue from the 100,000 people that descend on the town those seven days a year. They do it simply as a courtesy.

This situation reminds of strongly of a story in Atlas Shrugged where John Galt insists on paying Midas Mulligan a dime for the loan of his car for the day. The dime is a trivial amount and Mulligan might easily loan the car as a favor. Galt insists on the payment and I think the University of Alabama should do so as well.

The police department is providing a useful service to the university. This service comes at an expense and paying for it is an homage to capitalism.

Maybe it doesn’t make a difference in actual finances but I do think it’s an important statement to make as far as capitalism is concerned. There is nothing necessarily wrong with doing favors for friends but when somebody provides you a valuable service, pay for it. It could be as simple as buying them lunch. Doing so sets a good example for everyone.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

Daily Fantasy Sports is a quickly growing industry wherein people pick athletes in an attempt to win cash. They are an offshoot of Rotisserie or Fantasy Sports leagues which have been around for quite some time.

The New York attorney general has now said they are illegal within that state. Eric Schneiderman draws a distinction between more traditional Fantasy Sports leagues because, in his legal opinion, the daily games are ones of chance whereas the others are games of skill. There are any number of state regulations against games of chance.

What I want to talk about today is Schneiderman’s distinction between the two as a reason to make the law. I don’t want to discuss the fact that gambling remains illegal in many places in the country.

The reason Schneiderman believes the daily games are gambling is because the average player of such games is not aware of the scope of professional involvement. Advertisements promise riches but the reality is an elite group of professional gamblers, making up about 1% of all players, wins almost all of the money involved. They do this by submitting thousands of entries into the daily game basically covering a huge number of possibilities. This means the other 99% of players who submit one or two picks for each game have virtually no chance of winning unless they are extraordinarily lucky.

Should the 99% of players realize they have no chance to win they would stop playing thus reducing the profit of the 1% which would drive them from the game.

Meanwhile, traditional Fantasy Sports take place over the course of many months and are not nearly as profitable for professional gamblers who do not dominate them in the same fashion.

I largely agree with Schneiderman’s logic. The traditional fantasy games require less luck to win than the daily games. Professionals completely dominate the daily games and the average player has almost no chance of winning.

Yet I totally disagree with Schneiderman’s position. The information about the chances of winning in the daily games is readily available. Anyone who plays the daily game and claims ignorance as to their chances of recouping money is either lazy or stupid. It’s not the state of New York’s job to protect people from being lazy and/or stupid, much though they would like it to be.

This is a classic example of what Libertarians call the Nanny state.

The bottom line is that the more the state protects the lazy and stupid, the less freedom is available to the smart and hardworking.

Thus I am opposed.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There was an interesting football game this weekend between the University of Miami, The U, and Duke. The final play of the game was a multiple lateral affair where the Miami players threw it back again and again and eventually scored a touchdown.

Upon reviewing that final play it was noted one Miami player touched the ground with his knee and should have been ruled down. This happened after the clock reached zero. This might have been noticed by the officials during the play but should assuredly have been noticed by replay officials after the play. Neither noticed it and Miami was declared the victor.

There was also a missed penalty on Miami for an illegal block and Miami players ran onto the field before the play was over. Penalties cannot be reviewed and even if penalized for being on the field early, the touchdown would have counted with the penalty being assessed after the play. So neither of those two things rise to the level of the first issue, the knee being down.

As rules now stand, you cannot overrule events after they have been officially declared. Let’s say the Miami player’s knee was down with one second still on the clock, who is to say that Miami wouldn’t have scored on the next play. Therefore I think it’s generally perfectly correct to refuse to overturn a bad call the next day. This was a very unusual situation in that if the call is made correctly, the Miami player is down, the game is over, and Duke wins. There is no further chance for Miami because there is no time on the clock.

The NCAA has suspended both the referees and the replay officials for two future games but they will not award Duke the victory.

I’m of the opinion the circumstances in this case are enough to overturn the win. The player’s knee was down and that would have ended the game with no chance for Miami to score.

I see the other point of view as well in that overturning a game after the fact is fairly drastic. I just don’t think doing it this time would set much of a precedent for doing it frequently. It’s such a rare thing for a game to absolutely end on a bad call. Therefore if I was King of the World, Duke would be declared the winner.

What do you think?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s an ongoing story involving strippers and prostitution at the University of Louisville in which the evidence strongly suggests an assistant coach paid for women to dance naked and perform sex acts with basketball recruits and players.

At this point no criminal charges in the incidents have been filed and there is some doubt as if a crime has been committed. The head coach of the basketball team, Rick Pitino, has emphatically declared that he knew nothing of the parties at Billy Minardi Hall.

There are a couple of issues on point here for me.

The first question I ask is why anyone is in any trouble at all? From reading the various accounts of the incidents the recruits, the assistant coach who paid for the parties, and the women were all adults and engaged in the various activities without coercion.

My second issue is Pitino’s denial of any knowledge of the events. I argue that if someone wants to pay consenting adults to dance and potentially have sex with them then that’s a private contract between those individuals. However, I despise the “I didn’t know about it” argument. If you didn’t know about it, you should have known about it. You’re the head coach! What goes on during your watch is ultimately your responsibility.

If it were not for the NCAA I don’t think there would be any problem with the events as they apparently occurred. Certainly the NCAA can have whatever rules they want for their organization as long as they don’t run afoul of the Constitution. Therein lies my third issue, my favorite whipping boy, the NCAA.

Why do they have these rules?

The argument is that without restrictions preventing schools from offering favors to recruits, the richest schools would offer the biggest rewards. I’ve got news for you, NCAA. They already do. They build enormous stadiums, weight rooms, luxurious dormitories, lush cafeterias, fancy game-day uniforms, and other benefits in order to lure the athletes. Television exposure is a powerful incentive to a student who hopes to go onto a professional career and even just a kid who wants to be seen. Rules to prevent a coach from buying a bagel with spread on it are trying to close the barn door when there isn’t even a barn door to close. It’s wide open.

So a school has sex parties to entice recruits. I have no more problem with that than I do with a school housing them in special dormitories. It’s a salacious story and people like that, but let’s look at the root of the issue. The schools are making money from the games and want the best players. The players are workers, like it or not, and just like you and me, should be compensated for their work. They get a scholarship, true, but they have a right to any compensation their employer wants to give them. Is your salary capped by an organization? Do you make exactly the same as all the other workers?

Unfair playing field for wealthy schools? Life is an unfair playing field, get over it.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s a pretty interesting story in the news about a pair of football players from John Jay High School in San Antonio who slammed into a referee during the course of a game.

The video is brutal and the comment sections were filled with hate, as one might expect. Many wanted the two boys to be put in jail for the rest of their lives and things of this nature. Some even advocated the death penalty. I wrote a comment about the incident in which I expressed the idea that the two boys were likely frustrated by a referee that was either plain awful or was actively cheating. That while I thought expulsion from the team and some community service time along with a fine for the school was in order, I didn’t think it needed to go further than that.

My opinion was not popular.

More information is coming in about the incident. The boys unit coach told them: “this guy needs to pay for cheating us” for his calls in the game. At this point it is admitted that the referee ejected the wrong player from John Jay earlier in the game and there are multiple reports he used racial slurs against the players. The assistant has been suspended.

Just as I suggested restraint on punishing the boys I also suggest holding off vilifying the referee and coach until more facts are available.

I can tell you from my own experience in playing sports that referees do cheat. They don’t like certain teams and certain coaches. The first time it happened to me was in little league baseball when an umpire called me out on a third strike that was, literally, over my head. I had looked back at him when he called the second strike on a ball that was pretty low. He didn’t like that and he sure showed me. He showed me that refs cheat.

I wrote an entire post about this subject a while back. It’s a subject that I’m passionate about. Cheating anyone is a perversion of the system. It prevents the person or team who is best prepared and plays better from winning. That undermines capitalism, it undermines truth, it undermines society. When you work so hard to achieve something and have it taken from you by someone you think is cheating, the rage you feel is difficult to express.

I stand by my original assessment of what should happen the players. I think suspending the coach for making the revenge statement is appropriate. If what the referee is accused of doing is supported then that person should be removed and never allowed to referee again.

The people who know the truth about this situation are the fellow referees. They know all about it. In this situation what we see all too often is the people with integrity refusing to turn over the person among them who doesn’t have it. Their rational is that if people knew about the cheating, it tarnishes all referees. I disagree. What tarnishes any referee is cheating. When those who are aware of it don’t report the cheating, that’s what destroys their credibility. When they allow cheaters to operate openly they only encourage more cheating and further disrespect by coaches, players, and fans.

I’m certainly not saying the boys and the coach don’t deserve punishment. I am saying that if the referee was cheating and using racial slurs, if his fellow referees were aware of it and said nothing; then it’s only a matter of time until someone gets frustrated and enraged enough to do what the boys did.

Believe me, I’ve been there. I never punched a referee but I wasn’t far away from doing it on a number of occasions.