Does Energy Efficiency Save Energy?

What if it turned out that although energy regulations have made our cars and houses burn energy more efficiently, we don't use less energy because the money we save, leads us to drive more, build bigger houses, and let our appliances (e.g., hot tubs) run all the time? A disturbing thought, but that's the tentative conclusion of the environmental economist, Arik Levinson, who teaches at Georgetown and, for a time, was a senior economist for environmental issues with the Council of Economic Advisors under the Obama Administration. Here's the abstract from his current working paper on the topic (emphasis added):

Construction codes that regulate the energy efficiency of new buildings have been a centerpiece of US environmental policy for 40 years. California enacted the nation’s first energy building codes in 1978, and they were projected to reduce residential energy use—and associated pollution—by 80 percent. How effective have the building codes been? I take three approaches to answering that question. First, I compare current electricity use by California homes of different vintages constructed under different standards, controlling for home size, local weather, and tenant characteristics. Second, I examine how electricity in California homes varies with outdoor temperatures for buildings of different vintages. And third, I compare electricity use for buildings of different vintages in California, which has stringent building energy codes, to electricity use for buildings of different vintages in other states. All three approaches yield the same answer: there is no evidence that homes constructed since California instituted its building energy codes use less electricity today than homes built before the codes came into effect.

Levinson is currently circulating the paper, and some folks are quite critical of it. Nevertheless, if he is right, then environmental policy may need to change. In particular, Levinson argues that the most "efficient" way to reduce our carbon emissions is to raise the cost of emitting them. In other words, tax them. As anyone who pays attention to the political scene, however, in the current environment raising taxes is political suicide.

Levinson's study, the debate surrounding it, and its potential implications is the subject of the most recent Freakonomics podcast ("How Efficient is Energy Efficiency"), which can be downloaded from iTunes or listened to at the Freakonomics website. This one is well worth it, but you need to listen to it all the way through because not only is the summary of his study interesting but so is the discussion about the interplay of economic and political policy.

Who's Better: Tom or Joe (or Sammy or Johnny or Otto or Roger or Bart)?

The debate has begun. Who the best quarterback of all time: Joe Montana or Tom Brady? As a Niner fan, no one will ever convince me that Tom is better than Joe, but I'm biased, so that doesn't advance the argument too much. A recent statistical analysis by the folks at FiveThirtyEight list Montana as #1 and Brady as #3, but conspicuously absent from the list are greats like Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, and Otto Graham, not to mention the fact that other great QBs, such as Bart Starr and Roger Staubach don't even finish in the top-10. The fact that Starr isn't even in the conversation is stunning. He won 7 championships (he went to 8), including the first two Super Bowls. There is clearly a chronological bias going on here. More recent quarterbacks are given more weight than more distance ones.

The bigger problem, however, is this: It's hard, if not impossible, to compare QBs from different eras because they played under different rules, with different offensive schemes, and against different types of defenses. I think the best we can do is identify the best of each era, but even that is fraught with difficulties (e.g., there are many who think Manning is better than Brady but Brady had more success because he played for better coaches and teams). Still, it's far more doable than comparing Tom Brady with Sammy Baugh or Otto Graham.

P.S. As my friend, Tom Olson, points out, without Bart Starr the Lombardi Trophy would probably be called something else.

Is the Legion of Boom Doomed?

Something has gotten lost in the controversy surrounding Pete Carroll's decision to throw on 2nd and goal rather than handing the ball off to Marshawn Lynch: Namely that, the Patriots racked up over 300 yards passing against the so-called "Legion of Boom," what many people think is the NFL's best defense. Imagine, for a moment, that after the ball hit Jermaine Kearse's knee, it had bounced toward one of the two Patriots' defensive backs in the area, rather than to Kearse, and the Patriots had intercepted the ball then rather than a few moments later? No one would be tearing into Pete Carroll; instead, they'd wondering what happened to the Seattle defense, how it happened to give up 14 points in the fourth quarter and squandered a 24-14 point lead.

I'm pretty certain this hasn't been lost on everyone. In fact, I'm willing to bet that offensive coordinators around the league will be spending the offseason studying the fourth quarter, learning what the Patriots did in order to move the ball so (relatively) easily, and incorporating whatever insights they can glean into their own offensive schemes. Combined with the fact that the Seahawks are losing their defensive coordinator (heading to Atlanta) and probably one of their defensive backs, the legion of boom may be doomed. The rest of the NFL can only hope :-)!

What Are the Rules About Breaking the Rules? (Or: Why I Can't Root for Pete Carroll)

"If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough" 

-- Mark Grace, Chicago Cubs 1st Baseman

Much ink has been spilled about Deflate-gate (or my favorite, "Ballghazi"), the claim that the New England Patriots intentionally used deflated balls during the AFC Championship Game against the Baltimore Colts. As I noted before, the controversy seems a bit overblown since it is quite common for teams to "cheat" in order to gain an advantage over their opponents. To wit:

• Defensive backs regularly hold and bump receivers illegally, knowing they will only be penalized a fraction of the time. The Seahawks are notorious for doing this, as a Wall Street Journal article pointed out last year ("The Seahawks' Grabby Talons"), but they are hardly alone.
• Pitchers doctor baseballs in order to get them to break in unexpected ways. Gaylord Perry made a career of doing this and even admitted as much in his autobiography, Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession. This didn't keep him out of the Hall of Fame, either. He published the book in 1974 but wasn't elected to the Hall of Fame until 1991.
• Basketball players routinely foul their counterparts, but seldom, if ever, do they mention this to the referees. Can you imagine Lebron James saying to a ref, "Hey! I fouled that guy back there. You probably should let him shoot two" (yeah, right).
• Baseball teams are constantly attempting to steal the signs flashed by catchers to their pitchers, whether its batters positioning themselves in the on-deck circle so they can see the signs or runners on second base taking a quick look before they lead off. Perhaps the best known instance of sign-stealing is the one that culminated with Bobby Thompson's "shot heard 'round the world" that sent the Giants to the World Series and the Dodgers home for the winter (I love it when that happens). It turns out that the Giants manager, Leo Durocher, devised a sign-stealing system, using a telescopic lens located in center field, that the Giants used over the last 10 weeks of the season, during which time the Giants made up 13 games on the Dodgers.

There's no doubt that these examples count as cheating, but as Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter noted several years ago in his book, "Integrity," there are rules about breaking the rules:

A couple of years ago as I sat watching a televised football game... I was struck by an event I had often noticed but on which I had never reflected. A player who failed to catch a ball thrown his way hit the ground, rolled over, and then jumped up, celebrating as though he had caught the pass after all. The referee was standing in a position that did not give him a good view of what had happened, was fooled by the player's pretense, and so moved the ball down the field... But viewers at home... saw what the referee missed: the ball lying on the ground instead of snug in the receiver's hands. The only comment from the broadcasters: "What a heads-up play!" Meaning: "Wow, what a great liar this kid is! Well done!"

Let's be very clear: that is exactly what they meant. The player set out to mislead the referee and succeeded; he helped his team to obtain an advantage in the game that it had not earned. It could not have been accidental. He knew he did not catch the ball. By jumping up and celebrating, he was trying to convey a false impression. He was trying to convince the officials that he had caught the ball. And the officials believed him. So, in any ordinary understanding of the word, he lied...

When I began working on this book, I shared the story about the cheating football player with a few of my colleagues over lunch... They offered a bewildering array of fascinating and sophisticated arguments on why the receiver who pretended to catch the ball was doing nothing wrong. One in particular stuck in my mind. "You don't know if he was breaking the rules," of the best and brightest of my colleagues explained, "until you know what the rules are about following the rules."

So what are the rules about breaking the rules? I think the basic rule is this: it's okay to break them, but if you get caught you suffer the consequences. That is, if you throw a spitter and the umpire catches you, you'll be thrown out of the game. Or if you interfere with a receiver trying to catch a ball, you'll be penalized if the referee catches you. Or if you're a college football coach who pushes the limits of recruiting, and you get busted, then you and your program will pay the price.

Unless, of course, your Pete Carroll. Then you simply abandon ship and move to Seattle.

A Partial Defense of Pete Carroll

The above images are some of my favorites from Super Bowl XLIX. Like many I was stunned when the Seahawks elected to pass, rather than run, the ball on 2nd down and threw an interception. And I've enjoyed poking fun at Pete Carroll and the Seahawks (see picture below and to the right) after weeks of making fun at my own 49ers.

That said, whatever one might think about Carroll's decision, he wasn't completely loony. With 26 seconds left on the clock and only one timeout, there was no way the Seahawks could have run three straight running plays. They would've run out of time. If they had been forced to run three plays, at least one of those would've been a pass. In fact, they would've had to pass the ball on either 2nd or 3rd down.

Why? Well, let's say the Seahawks ran the ball on 2nd down and didn't score. They would've been forced to call a time out, which means that on 3rd down, they would've passed because if they ran and didn't score, there'd have been be no way for them to stop the clock. So, if you're Pete Carroll, do you pass it on the down when everyone knows you're passing (3rd), or do you pass it when folks aren't sure (2nd)? I think you could make a reasonable argument for throwing on 2nd, rather than 3rd, down.

Still, given Lynch's knack for finding the end zone, I'd have taken a chance on running the ball on 2nd down, and then make darn sure the pass on 3rd down was either incomplete or caught for a touchdown (I'm sure that was Carroll's expectations of Wilson when he threw on 2nd down). Then, if we still hadn't scored, I'd still be able to give one more shot at scoring on 4th down. I just don't see the Patriots keeping Lynch out of the end zone twice. But, you never know. In fact, we'll never know.

I can't believe I'm (partially) defending Pete Carroll. It's time to move on.

Who Cheats? Who Doesn't?

Although I think the flap over deflate-gate (or Ballghazi) is a bit overblown ("The Ethics of Tom Brady's Balls"), recent studies have identified five attitudes, factors, or practices that contribute to cheating in sports:

1. Winning is everything: Those who were passionate and had a level of self-worth that transcended wins and losses were more likely to obey the rules and display good sportsmanship. Athletes who displayed an obsessive passion leading to a sense of arrogance and self-importance were more likely to cheat if they thought it would help them win.

2. Everyone else is doing it: A study analyzing major violations of NCAA rules by big-time college football programs from 1981 to 2011 found conference affiliation and the interaction among rivals are important to the decision to cheat.

3. Star-crossed coaching: Youngsters playing for coaches who reward and separate out the best athletes are more likely to say they would cheat if it would help them win, according to a yearlong study of British adolescents competing in regional sports leagues.

4. Skills vs. competition: Placing an emphasis on mastering skills as opposed to beating others may create more ethical organizations. “To reduce cheating behaviours … coaches should encourage their athletes to improve their personal bests rather than overemphasize competition with others,” researchers suggested.

5. Deviant stars are made, not born: Interviews of 104 former or current NFL players found that it is a culture in which many athletes begin to believe they can do no wrong off the field.

All this is summarized in more detail in David Briggs's most recent Ahead of the Trend post: "When the Game Doesn't Stand Tall," a regular feature of the Association of Religion Data Archive (ARDA).

Why Reporters Shouldn't Debate Richard Sherman (Hint: He's Smarter Than They Are)

When Jon Gruden bolted the Oakland Raiders for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after the 2001 season, Raider fullback Jon Ritchie remarked, "It was a little shocking, the alacrity with which he departed." Ritchie's remark reportedly sent several journalists scrambling because they didn't know what "alacrity" meant. Turns out, Ritchie graduated from from Stanford, and much to the chagrin of the assembled reporters, he might have been the smartest guy in the room.

This does not mean that all Stanford athletes are smart (although most of those I got to know while working as a teaching assistant at Stanford during my graduate school days were quite bright) or that athletes from other schools are not. It does suggest, however, that when interacting with former Stanford students a good working hypothesis is that they probably aren't stupid.

That is why I was surprised to learn that on Super Bowl media day that a reporter got into a debate with Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who attended Stanford as an undergraduate. Whatever one might think of Sherman (and I'm not one of his biggest fans), one thing is for certain: he's very bright, so why a reporter thought she could go toe-to-toe with him is beyond me. Some of his remarks to her are classic:

It's difficult to have a discussion with someone who has no information. You don't have any information. I have all the research. I'm doing your job for you... I wish this would be a better debate, but ... the levels aren't there for us.

I suspect they weren't (on the same level that is) or that she had done her research (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn the Sherman had done his). My guess is that most reporters think they're smarter than the players they cover, but I doubt they always are. They might have more education, but that doesn't mean they're smarter. Not by a long shot. In fact, I'd be willing to be they'd trade places in a heart beat. I know I would.