[OT] What is The Most Competitive Sport (GEEK ALERT)

Warning! Geek alert!!
[cnls.lanl.gov]
Some physicists from Los Alamos and Boston University ask "What is the Most Competive Sport?' and try to answer by using records of every NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and FA game evry played. They define "competitive" as meaning the frequency of upsets - games where the team that is currently lower in the standings wins. Their answer, from most to least, is soccer, baseball, hockey, basketball, and football.

[q]We present an extensive statistical analysis of the results of all sports competitions in five major sports leagues in England and the United States. We characterize the parity among teams by the variance in the winning fraction from season-end standings data and quantify the predictability of games by the frequency of upsets from game results data. We introduce a mathematical model in which the underdog team wins with a fixed upset probability. This model quantitatively relates the parity among teams with the predictability of the games, and it can be used to estimate the upset frequency from standings data. We propose the likelihood of upsets as a measure of competitiveness. [/q]

This entirely intuitive conclusion could be reached by simply looking at the variance in winning percentage for teams in that sport. (At least for baseball, hockey, basketball and football. I don't kow anything about soccer leagues.) But interesting to see that it also holds up under the definitions of their study.

Football may have just changed after tonight. Don't mess with Texas!

That kinda sounds counter-intuitive to me. I would think that the most competitive sports are those in which upsets happen least. My reasoning is that if we assume that the better ranked team is indeed better, if there were no luck (wind direction, bounces of the puck, etc), psychological breakdowns of the team, etc etc, that better team should win every time because it competes better. Thus, every instance of an upset could be seen as a case of non-competition factors tipping the balance.

Think of an extreme case... imagine a sport similar to hockey but in which the game begins with a coin toss, the winner of which starts out with two points. In such a sport, upsets would happen frequently -- the lower-ranked team would just have to get lucky on the coin toss, which would happen about half of the time, in order to have a good shot at winning. And yet, I would consider such a sport less competitive than normal hockey, in that its outcome is less determined by the two teams competing.

Yikes, that's two paragraphs... somebody needs school to start up again so he'll have less free time on his hands...

I just think your definition of competitive is extremely different from what other posters have discussed. Competitive, as they state, simply means that each game played would be closer, thus more prone to upsets. The best teams in "competitive" leagues are closer to the worst teams in terms of winning % than those in less competitive leagues.

Hm, I think I see your point. Are you saying that the idea isn't to decide which sport is most intrinsically competitive, but rather which sport has the most competitive league? I could buy that. If we further assumed that each sport is about the same in terms of competitiveness -- the sport itself, not the league that plays it -- then the proposed ranking would indeed make sense.

Well, there's certainly an argument to be made that the most competitive leagues are that way because of some inherent property of the sport, no? Although, true, not a rock solid one.

Think of 'competitive' in this sense as meaning 'parity'. And if you need proof that that's appropriate - compare AH, where QU, Mercyhurst, and sometimes HC, are/were the dominant powers, to the typical ECAC (except 2003 mainly), where on the last weekend of the season, the first place team could finish anywhere from 1st to 6th, and the middle teams can typically finish 3rd to 10th. If you don't agree that that means the ECAC is more 'competitive', then I'm sure at least you could see why others would use that definition.


It may be worth another study (I didn't read this one yet, other than David's snippet) to compare inter-season competitiveness too, which the NFL is known for (i.e. where are the Eagles and Pats this year vs. last), with intra-season competitiveness, in which they are apparently last.

I think part of it can be explained by point differentials within the game. The most competitive sports go up incrementally by one (one run or one goal), where as the two least competitive sports have different scoring increments (1-2-3 for basketball counting free-throws and 2-3-6-7-8 for football counting safeties, extra points and two-point conversions). I don't have any data, but I would expect good teams to execute plays that yield more points (touchdowns in football, for example) more often, and thus the gap is harder to overcome.

Also, in soccor, hockey, and baseball, an exceptional individual on an average team can instantly make them super-competative if that person is in the right position (such as dominant goalie or pitcher). If you have one person who can completely prevent the other team from scoring, your average team only needs one run or goal to win (which is not unreasonable for an average team to produce). Whereas in football or basketball, a great player on an average team has less of an effect because of the nature of the respective games. In basketball for example, a team with one great player and four average players against a team of 5 very good players would probably not fair as well consistently as a hockey team with a goalie who absolutely stands on his head all the time, but whose teammates are average, against a team made up entirely of very good players.

I don't care enough to read their methodology, but it seems that league size would also affect their results if they're really applying a "fixed" probability that an upset occurs. A large chunk of their hockey data comes, by definition, from a 6-team league, while there are many, many "FA" teams (did they use EPL only?). A very bad FA team should have a much less chance at an upset of a top team than a 6th-place team over a 1-st place team in hockey (and yet, soccer shows as "most competitive". Seems like you'd really have to use Bradley-Terry rankings or something and see how well that sort of rating predicts individual games, or aggregate in games between teams in different percentile bands or something.