It’s rare that a written piece is so cogent and yet different that it causes me to involuntarily smile. I don’t know why I do it, but when I’m confronted with an absolutely elegant strain of thinking, I’m like a little kid learning how something works: giggles abound.
Peep this awesome article from Slate.
The author muses over alternatives to the coin flip to determine possession at the beginning of overtime in the NFL. Right now, it’s a capricious system. It’s literally determined by random chance. In the first round of the playoffs this year, San Diego won the coin toss, received the ball, and promptly went down the field, scored, and left. Their opponent, Indianapolis, was left there, mouth agape, looking like Ryan Seacrest speechless during the American Idol auditions.
There must be a better way.
Well, whadya know it, when you treat it like a market and allow for auctioning, you get a more competitive and more entertaining arrangement!
An even more elegant solution to the overtime problem was proposed in 2002 by Chris Quanbeck, an electrical engineer (and Green Bay Packers fan). Quanbeck's idea was to auction off possession of the ball in the natural currency of the game: field position. The team that was willing to begin closest to its own goal line would receive the privilege of possession.
How cool would that be?
I hope you said “very cool”, because that’s the correct answer.
All joking pseudoconversations aside, I think it’s a nice little illustration of a basic capitalist principle: when you establish an open and free arena with known rules, individuals will be better allocators of scarce resources than third parties.
Wow, two sports posts in one day.
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