Territorial Rights and New Arenas: The Case of the Phoenix Coyotes

Brad Humphreys at the IJSF blog has written extensively on the reluctance of the NHL to allow the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Southern Ontario. See here, here and here, though there are obviously many more as the last one listed is Part X. The resistance to the move is motivated by protecting the territorial rights of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres.

However, I believe there is a pretty strong secondary motive to the reluctance to a move: the relatively new arena that the Coyotes play in Glendale. Glendale built an arena for the Coyotes in 2003. The arena is only for hockey, as the Phoenix Suns play in US Airways arena (formerly American West Arena; that name change cost me a point in a recent trivia contest). While some teams certainly care about some future team invading their territorial rights, they are all interested in eventually having an arena built for the team by the local municipalities. I do not think Nashville has to worry about another hockey team moving to their city, but they will probably want the city to build them a new arena at some point.

If the Coyotes move out of Arizona, the next time a team threatens to move unless they get a new arena, opponents will have a pretty convincing retort:

Team: "Build us a new arena or we will move to Albuquerque."

Opponents of new arena: "Well, if we build the arena, we will spend $300 million, then the team will play there for five years and then move to Canada. Look at what happened to Glendale."

Team: ?

One way to test this theory is to see if the league would restrict the team from moving to a location without a problem with territorial rights such as Houston, Kansas City or Winnipeg. Of course none of those markets would be nearly as valuable to an owner as Southern Ontario.

Instant Replay

I was not watching the "Perfect Game" last night by Armando Galarraga, because I was too busy watching the Flyers' 4-3 overtime win over the Blackhawks. What I am struck by is the discrepancy in instant replay rules between hockey and baseball. Baseball supposedly cannot have instant replay because it will break up the flow of the game. However, hockey which has a lot more natural flow to the game has instant replay. In last night's game there were two key calls that went to instant replay, one giving the Flyers a goal and one not giving them a goal in overtime. The first one went to replay after the game continued for a minute and a half. If hockey can have instant replay despite problems with the flow of the game, then I cannot see how baseball cannot. Admittedly hockey needs instant replay more in that both of the calls would have been impossible to necessarily get right without replay, whereas the ump in the baseball game should have gotten the play at first base right anyway.

P.S. After writing this but before posting, I found another argument along the same lines.

My MVP Picks at the 1/3 Mark

Here are my picks for MVP at the 1/3 Mark of the baseball season. (Actually as of games on Saturday).
NL
Halladay
Utley
Jiminez
Votto
Heyward
Byrd
Johnson
Wainwright
Willingham
Lincecum

AL
Morneau
Cano
Longoria
Rios
Wells
Jackson
Youkilis
Crawford
Hudson
Beltre

The most interesting thing is that “the year of the pitcher” seems to be primarily an NL phenomenon, as the NL ballot has five pitchers to the AL’s zero pitchers. I think this is also a result of there being more really good position players in the AL so far. Also realize that each start could make a big difference for a starter, so the NL ballot actually would have changed some since Saturday as both Wainwright and Jiminez had good starts since then.

Tennessee Smokies

My family and I went on a vacation to the Smoky Mountains last week. As part of the trip I dragged everyone to see the Tennessee Smokies play. The Smokies are the AA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, my favorite team. Amazingly the Smokies managed to leave nine men on base despite hitting into two double plays. They also had a base runner hit by a batted ball and let the go-ahead-run score thanks to an error by their third baseman. Sounds like they are ready to be called up to the big leagues.

End Snark. Actually two of the nine men left on base were at the end of the game after the winning run had been scored. The error was made by a 20-year old, and the base runner hit by the batted ball was a pitcher who probably hasn't had too many chances to practice base running. And of course they won the game, are 29-20 and in first place despite their starting shortstop getting called up to the Cubs three weeks ago.

Number of Playoff Teams: NBA vs. NHL Comparison

The NBA and NHL have fairly similar structures to them. Each league plays the same number of games, 82, plays the same length playoff series, 7 games, and lets the same number of teams in to the playoffs, two 8 team conference playoffs. Both have a problem with their playoff structure from my point of view. However, it is not the same problem for each. In the NBA you have a number of teams that have little or no chance of winning even after making the playoffs. The talk-show hosts in Chicago discussed whether it would be better for the Bulls to make the playoffs or miss and improve their draft position. Getting the 8^th seed has very little value in actually winning a championship. In the NHL since every team can win the regular season matters very little if you are in playoff qualifying position.

This year the semi-final matchups in the NBA will feature the 1 and 3 seeds facing off in one conference and the 2 and 4 seeds in the other conference. The NHL will also not have any duplicate seeds between the conferences as the 1 and 2 and either the 6 and 8 seeds or the 7 and 8 seeds.

This outcome in the NHL vs. the NBA is not new. Since going to approximately the current playoff system the NBA has seen three 8-seeds beat 1-seeds in the first round in 54 matchups. These results may overstate the likelihood of an upset as two of the 8-seeds won 5-game playoff series, rather than the current 7-game series, which should give the weaker team a better chance. Also one of those two seasons was strike-shortened, so the regular-season performance should be less tied to post-season performance than in a normal-length season. In the NHL, 8-seeds have beaten 1-seeds nine times in 32 matchups. Only one of those came in a strike-shortened season and all of them were in 7-game series.

Here's the thing. Neither situation is optimal. The NBA situation simply adds in teams with no chance of actually winning, while the NHL situation leads to a de-valuing of the regular season as any team that makes the playoffs has about as good a chance of winning. The difference in outcome is probably attributable to differences in the nature of the sports (less competitive balance in general in the NBA, hot goalies in the NHL). Regardless of the cause the problem is too many teams in the playoffs and it does not depend on the underlying nature of the sport.

What a Hypothetical 96-Team Field for the NCAA Tournament Would Look Like

The NCAA seems pretty insistent on expanding the NCAA Tournament to 96-Teams. Just like with last year's tournament, I wanted to see what a 96-team field this year would look like. I assume that the teams who made the actual tournament (65), plus all of the at-large teams for the NIT (24), plus any automatic bids for the NIT who had a higher seed than the lowest at-large team (1-Kent St.) would all make it. That leaves six slots. I will primarily use RPI as a measure of the best teams, though I will actually examine the records of the teams and generally teams from big conferences get in with lower RPI's. A dubious assumption I will also make is to also assume that any team with a losing record will not get in. Using those criteria I would say that the additional six teams would be Arizona, VCU, Marshall, Miami, SLU and Alabama. Based on my selections every BCS conference team with a strictly winning record, except an ineligible USC, would have made the tournament.

Here is a full bracket for a 96-team tournament from the Washington Post. The only differences between mine and his, other than 1-bid conferences, are that he includes Georgia, South Carolina, Charlotte and La Tech, and I include Ohio, Houston, Alabama and Nevada. I had excluded Georgia and South Carolina because they had losing records. Ohio and Houston won automatic bids; Charlotte continued its tail-spin and Nevada beat LaTech after the other story was written. So the differences can be explained by either one assumption (including losing teams) or when the selections were made.

Baseball Leaving Oneonta

At the Hardball Times there is an article bemoaning the departure of minor-league baseball in Oneonta. As I have discussed previously, Oneonta is a pretty small city to support a minor-league baseball team. In my study I had it as the third least likely city to host a baseball team that was hosting a baseball team. I would like to admit to one limitation of my study. I was not able to incorporate any measure of tradition and longevity of a team in a location. Tradition and history are an important part of the appeal of baseball, so this is a legitimate concern. For instance, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with long histories would seem to be better markets for baseball than similarly-sized markets without much baseball history such as Portland and Sacramento. Even with this consideration, the small size of the Oneonta market does not seem to be able to support a Short-Season A team.

I realize there will always be fans who are upset about the loss of a team, but Norwich just seems to me to be a much better market than Oneonta.