When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants

by Steven D. Levitt

  *As of this writing (January 2015), Dan has just over 4,200 hours to go, and his handicap is down to 3.1.

  Levitt Is Ready for the Senior Tour

  (SJD)

  Levitt has made no secret of his desire to become a good enough golfer to someday play the Champions Tour, for players fifty and older.

  After watching his amazing performance last week, I now believe Levitt does stand a chance of landing on the senior professional tour. But not in golf.

  I was out in Chicago for a couple of days to work with Levitt. After a long day, we went out for dinner at a place near the University of Chicago called Seven Ten. It has food, beer, and bowling alleys—just a couple of them and nothing fancy. Old-school bowling.

  After the meal, I tried to get Levitt to bowl a game or two. He wasn’t interested. Said he was worried about hurting his golf swing. (Puh-leeze.) He said he’d watch me bowl. I can’t think of anything less fun than bowling alone except having someone sit and watch you bowl alone. So I lied and told him that bowling would probably be good for his golf swing—the heavy ball could loosen up his joints, yada yada, etc.

  He finally agreed when I suggested the loser pay for dinner.

  He somehow found a ten-pound ball that fit his fingers, and in his first practice frame he rolled it as if it were a duckpin ball. It missed everything. I was feeling pretty good about the bet. Out of friendship, I suggested he try a heavier ball. He moved up to a twelve-pounder. And then he proceeded to bowl a 158, which he told me was about thirty pins above his average. He won.

  There was nothing impressive about his form: even though he’s a righty, he delivered from left to right and he put no movement on the ball. But he knocked the pins down.

  So of course I suggested we bowl a second game. He said he wasn’t interested but, again, he came around.

  He opened with a spare and then a turkey—three strikes in a row. Amazing! Then two open frames. His luck had seemingly run out. But it hadn’t: he now rolled four more consecutive strikes. It is hard to describe how unlikely this seemed, and was. He wound up with a 222. A 222! I took bowling as a PE requirement in college, and my career high is only 184.

  When we got back to his house, Levitt looked up the current top PBA bowlers: a 222 average would put you firmly in the top twenty. And he bowled his 222 cross-lane, with a twelve-pound ball, after a big dinner, a beer, and a day of work.

  My best explanation is that Levitt’s maniacal devotion to golf, especially his thousands of hours of short-game practice, may have unwittingly turned him into a bowling dynamo. Either that, or he was lying about his existing average and he simply sandbagged me into buying dinner.

  In either case, it was a pretty impressive feat. Unfortunately, his appearance on the PBA’s senior tour is unlikely: wanting to go out on top, he has vowed never to bowl again.

  True to his word, Levitt hasn’t touched a bowling ball since.

  Loss Aversion in the NFL

  (SJD)

  Football coaches are known for being extraordinarily conservative when it comes to calling risky plays, since a single bad decision (or even a good decision that doesn’t work out) can get you fired. In the jargon of behavioral economics, coaches are “loss-averse”; this concept, pioneered by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, holds that we experience more pain with a loss of x than we experience pleasure with a gain of x. Who experiences loss aversion? Well, just about everyone: day traders, capuchin monkeys, and especially football coaches.

  Which is why the last play of yesterday’s Chiefs-Raiders game was so interesting. With five seconds left, Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil had a tough decision to make. His team was trailing by three points with the ball inside the Raiders’ one-yard line. If the Chiefs ran a play and didn’t score, they would likely not have time for another play and would lose. If they kicked the easy field goal, the game would go to overtime—and even though the Chiefs were playing at home, the Raiders had moved the ball easily late in the game, and Vermeil, as he would later admit, was scared that the Raiders would win the coin toss in overtime and promptly score, winning the game without the Chiefs ever having a chance.

  In retrospect, it wasn’t all that tough of a gamble. Choosing between a) a very significant gain if his team could accomplish the relatively simple act of advancing the ball two feet; or b) a shadowy outcome that seemed as likely to end in loss as in victory, Vermeil did what most of us would probably do if we didn’t have several million people peeping over our shoulders, ready to criticize us: he went for the touchdown.

  Vermeil sent in a running play, Larry Johnson dived into the end zone, and the Chiefs won. The front-page headline on today’s USA Today: “Chiefs’ Bold Gamble Hits Pay Dirt at Home: Kansas City shocks Oakland with touchdown after forgoing tying field goal on last play of game.”

  The fact that Vermeil’s decision became the lead story is one good indicator of how rare it is for coaches to take such a risk. Here is what he later told reporters: “Wow! I was scared. I just figured I’m too old to wait. [Vermeil recently turned sixty-nine.] If we had not made it, then you guys would have had a lot of fun with that. It was not an impulsive thing. It was the right thing for us to do.”

  Congratulations to Vermeil for making a good choice that turned out well. Here’s hoping a few of his colleagues will be envious enough of the attention he gets for making this wise gamble and follow suit.

  Bill Belichick Is Great

  (SDL)

  I respect Bill Belichick more today than I ever have.

  Last night he made a decision in the final minutes that led his New England Patriots to defeat. It will likely go down as one of the most criticized decisions any coach has ever made. With his team leading by six points and just over two minutes left in the game, he elected to go for it on fourth down on his own side of the field. His offense failed to get the first down, and the Indianapolis Colts promptly drove for a touchdown.

  He has been excoriated for the choice. Everyone seems to agree it was a terrible blunder.

  Here is why I respect Belichick so much. The data suggest that he actually probably did the right thing if his objective was to win the game. The economist David Romer studied years’ worth of data and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, teams seem to punt way too much. Going for a first down on fourth and short yardage in your own territory is likely to increase the chance your team wins (albeit slightly). But Belichick had to know that if it failed, he would be subjected to endless criticism.

  If his team had gotten the first down and the Patriots won, he would have gotten far less credit than he got blame for failing. This introduces what economists call a “principal-agent problem.” Even though going for it increases his team’s chance of winning, a coach who cares about his reputation will want to do the wrong thing. He will punt just because he doesn’t want to be the goat. (I’ve seen the same thing in my research on penalty kicks in soccer; kicking it right down the middle is the best strategy, but it is so embarrassing when it fails that players don’t do it often enough.) What Belichick proved by going for it last night is that 1) he understands the data; and 2) he cares more about winning than anything else.

  How Advantageous Is Home-Field Advantage? And Why?

  (SJD)

  Do home teams really have an advantage?

  Absolutely. In their book Scorecasting, Toby Moscowitz and Jon Wertheim helpfully compile the percentage of home games won by teams in all the major sports. Some data sets go back further than others (MLB figures are since 1903; NFL figures are “only” from 1966, and MLS since 2002), but they are all large enough to be conclusive:

  League Home Games Won

  MLB 53.9%

  NHL 55.7%

  NFL 57.3%

  NBA 60.5%

  MLS 69.1%

  So it’s hard to argue against the home-field advantage. In fact Levitt once wrote an academic paper about the wisdom of betting (shh!) on home underdogs, which we wrote about further in the Times.

  But why
does that advantage exist? There are a lot of theories to consider, including:

  • “Sleeping in your own bed” and “eating home cooking”

  • Better familiarity with the home field/court

  • Crowd support

  Those all make sense, don’t they? In Scorecasting, Moscowitz and Wertheim compile data to test a variety of popular theories. You might be surprised (and maybe even disappointed) to read their conclusion:

  When athletes are at home, they don’t seem to hit or pitch better in baseball . . . or pass better in football. The crowd doesn’t appear to be helping the home team or harming the visitors. We checked “the vicissitudes of travel” off the list. And although scheduling bias against the road team explains some of the home-field advantage, particularly in college sports, it’s irrelevant in many sports.

  So if these popular explanations don’t have much explanatory power for home-field advantage, what does?

  In a word: the refs. Moscowitz and Wertheim found that home teams essentially get slightly preferential treatment from the officials, whether it’s a called third strike in baseball or, in soccer, a foul that results in a penalty kick. (It’s worth noting that a soccer referee has more latitude to influence a game’s outcome than officials in other sports, which helps explain why the home-field advantage is greater in soccer, around the world, than in any other pro sport.)

  Moscowitz and Wertheim also make clear, however, an important nuance: official bias is quite likely involuntary.

  What does this mean? It means that officials don’t consciously decide to give the home team an advantage—but rather, being social creatures (and human beings) like the rest of us, they assimilate the emotion of the home crowd and, once in a while, make a call that makes a whole lot of close-by, noisy people very happy.

  One of the most compelling (and cleverest) arguments in favor of this theory comes from a research paper by Thomas Dohmen about home-field advantage in the Bundesliga, the top soccer league in Germany.

  Dohmen found that home-field advantage was smaller in stadiums that happened to have a running track surrounding the soccer pitch, and larger in stadiums without a track.

  Why?

  Apparently, when the crowd sits closer to the field, the officials are more susceptible to getting caught up in the home-crowd emotion. Or, as Dohmen puts it:

  The social atmosphere in the stadium leads referees into favoritism although being impartial is optimal for them to maximize their re-appointment probability.

  So it looks like crowd support does matter—but not in the way you might have thought. Keep this in mind next time you’re shouting your brains out at a football game. Just make sure you know who you’re supposed to be shouting at.

  Ten Reasons to Like the Pittsburgh Steelers

  (SJD)

  After the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, a lot of people wrote or called to ask if my family and I were okay. Some of these people were casual acquaintances at best but, for many of them, I was the only person they knew who lived in New York. Their concern was extremely moving even if, at first, a bit surprising.

  I’ve been reminded of this outpouring over the past two weeks, as I’ve fielded e-mails and calls from people congratulating me on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ making it back to the Super Bowl, against the Cardinals. I figure that, once again, for many of these people I am the only Steelers fan they know.

  I feel sheepish accepting congratulations for an accomplishment as weak as this—simply rooting for a team that happens to win a bunch of football games. Plainly I can claim no credit. While it is true that I have brought my young son, a devout fan, to Pittsburgh for a game in each of the past three seasons, the Steelers lost all three games! Considering that their overall home record during that period was 13–6, I am obviously no good-luck charm.

  But with great fortune comes great responsibility, and so, in return for this great fortune, let me accept the responsibility of laying out a few reasons to like the Steelers. I am not trying to convert anyone here; I’m only dispensing some ammunition for the undecided.

  1. While the Steelers are attempting to win their record sixth Super Bowl, they were for the first forty years of their existence almost incomparably bad. So whether you gravitate toward prolific winners or lovable losers, the Steelers can satisfy your needs. Back in the 1930s, they paid big money to sign the college star Byron “Whizzer” White. He played wonderfully but stayed only one season; he went on to a slightly more impressive career as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

  2. The Steelers have been majority-owned by the same family, the Rooneys, since the team’s founding in 1933. The story goes that Art Rooney bought the team for $2,500 with the winnings of a great day at Saratoga Race Course—he was a vigorous gambler and a beloved rogue—but that is probably apocryphal. The team is now onto its third generation of family management and, as families go, the Rooneys are pretty exemplary: honorable, charitable, humble, and more. (If you are pleased with Barack Obama, you have extra reason to like them. Dan Rooney, the team’s seventy-six-year-old chairman, is a lifelong Republican who last year got behind Obama early and campaigned hard throughout Pennsylvania. It’d be a stretch to say that Rooney pushed the election toward Obama, but there are few brands in the state as strong as the Steelers, so it certainly didn’t hurt.) The family prides itself on running a football team that reflects its values; the Steelers are known as a “character” team. Which makes it interesting to see what happens when a player exhibits some bad character. Earlier this season, when starting wide receiver Santonio Holmes was pulled over by the police for marijuana possession (he used to sell drugs as a teenager, it turns out), the team suspended him for a week. This was hardly mandatory; Holmes hadn’t even been arrested. But it sends a signal.

  Meanwhile, a starting wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers, Vincent Jackson, was arrested for suspicion of drunk driving a few days before the Chargers recently came to Pittsburgh for a playoff game. The Chargers issued one of those pro forma “we will monitor the situation” press releases, and Jackson played as usual.

  3. Myron Cope. He was a talented writer who became a Steelers broadcaster despite having a voice that sounded like gravel and Yiddish tossed in a blender. He was relentlessly unique; among his on-air exhortations: “Yoi!” or, if something really exciting happened, “Double Yoi!” Cope, who died last year, deftly blended boosterism with realism, which made him an institution in Pittsburgh. But the accomplishment for which he’ll remain best known is inventing the Terrible Towel, a Steelers-gold terry-cloth rag that will be widely seen, waving madly in the Tampa sunshine, on Sunday. Many other teams have copied the Towel, but nowhere does it have such resonance as in Pittsburgh—in part because Cope donated the considerable profits to the Allegheny Valley School, a home for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, whose residents include Cope’s son.

  4. The fan diaspora. Even though the city of Pittsburgh has transformed itself nicely from a manufacturing town to a service town, it has lost about half its population in the last few decades. This has created a diaspora of fans all over the country and beyond, Steelers lovers who had to leave the ’Burgh for better jobs and who then taught their kids to be Steelers lovers even though they lived in Arizona or Florida or Alaska. As a result, there’s a “Steelers bar”—a place to watch the game on Sundays with like-minded folks—in just about any good-sized city in America. The Steelers may not be “America’s Team,” as the Cowboys claim, but perhaps they should be.

  5. Franco Harris. One of the most interesting and enigmatic football players in history, so much so that somebody (i.e., yours truly) even wrote a book about his strange appeal. Franco was also, of course, the star of the football miracle known as the Immaculate Reception (whose name was popularized, naturally, by Cope). Also, his teammate Mean Joe Greene was the star of one of the best TV commercials ever—which is being remade this year, with the extraordinarily appealing Troy Polamalu in the lead.

 
6. The Steelers are good assessors of talent, both seen and unseen. Consider their first-round draft picks since 2000: Plaxico Burress, Casey Hampton, Kendall Simmons, Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Santonio Holmes, Lawrence Timmons, and Rashard Mendenhall. Aside from Burress, all but two are valuable Steelers starters. Timmons is on the verge of being a valuable starter and it’s too early to tell about Mendenhall, the rookie whose shoulder was broken in mid-season by Ray Lewis. And, even more impressively, consider the fact that two of their very best players, Willie Parker and James Harrison, were undrafted. Harrison, recently named the league’s defensive MVP, is the only undrafted player in history to have won this award. (Granted, the Steelers’ opponents in the Super Bowl, the Arizona Cardinals, are quarterbacked by Kurt Warner, a potential Hall of Famer who was bagging groceries for a living before he made it as a football player.)

  7. The Steelers are a small-market team (Pittsburgh’s population is less than 350,000) that manages to always play big. Compare them to Pittsburgh’s baseball team, the Pirates, which hasn’t had a winning season in fifteen years. True, small-market teams have an easier time in football than in baseball because of the NFL’s revenue-sharing policy, but it’s also true that the Steelers are a fiscally prudent organization. This can especially be seen in their willingness to let their own high-priced free agents go (Alan Faneca, Joey Porter, and Plaxico Burress are recent examples). Nor do they purchase the rights of aging superstars who won’t fit their team anyway.

  8. Especially when compared to baseball, there is a real paucity of great books about football. One of the very best, however, Roy Blount Jr.’s About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, is about the Steelers.