Since the Steelers are out of the running

I got to thinking about how the NFL works, and whether or not it relates to the rest of us.

Football is the consummate team sport, even the best running back or quarterback in history can't force a team with a bunch of pantywaists for a line to win games. But, the league tries to create equality within teams by giving draft picks out in inverse order of performance and capping salaries. The draft issue is interesting, presumably the majority of the best college athletes go to the worst teams (trading for draft picks might offer a natural experiment,) and for every first round draft pick who's a standout you also seem to hear about a late round pick doing just as well. Is that because teams aren't necessarily good at picking good performers, or is it because the best athletes don't get a good chance to shine while stuck with bad teams? Or is this all a misconception?



I'd love to see some research on how players drafted to bad teams perform compared to players drafted to good teams, do they have longer or shorter careers (and are good players on bad teams more likely to get career ending injuries due to being played too much or too soon?) Are high draft picks more likely to be picked for the pro bowl if they go to a good team verses a bad team? Has free agency affected this, and how? Is the Heisman a good predictor of anything? And what variables do you look at to determine just how successful a player is? Personal performance (lifetime rushing/TDs/Sacks? Average yearly stats?) or team based performance (playoff/Superbowl wins? Win rate with the player as a starter/delta of win rate after player became a starter?)

And does this have any crossover value? Are there parallels in lifetime performance between, say, a high draft pick choosing between playoff team and a sub .500 team and a Harvard MBA picking between a Fortune 500 employer and a 20 million dollar local firm?

It seems like there are a ton of different things you could look at and interesting questions to ask.

That got me thinking about other football and sports related questions. When was the last pay verses performance work done on pro sports, how did it measure MRP of the players, did it look at the effect of salary caps, and what compensation models did they look at? (Straight MRP or something like a tournament model where the winner takes a large chunk of the pot, for example.)

Frankly, it might even be interesting to try and find out what exactly determines marginal revenue for a sports team. Average revenue, sure, but marginal revenue? Do you take all the year long contracts out of the equation like season tickets and TV broadcast rights, maybe also off season swag purchases and look at how revenue changes after a win. Then compare revenue after a loss, and see if the magnitude of either has an impact on revenues, maybe use bye weeks as a control? What about the playoffs and Superbowl? Or do you look at revenues year on, compare how TV contracts change after a successful year verses a losing season?