Member Teams Research Articles

Carbon emission in football games

Abstract: The environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions arising from travel has emerged as a significant concern. Notably, the recent frequent realignments within the Power Five conferences have led to substantial fluctuations in the annual carbon footprint of football games played between member teams. In this comprehensive study, we collected and analysed conference data spanning the previous decade, as well as forthcoming schedules (wherever available), to evaluate shifts in this carbon emissions footprint. Our findings underscore the potential environmental ramifications of the impending realignment, commencing in 2024, revealing the possibility of an almost twofold increase in carbon emissions.

Maximizing the Runs Scored by a Team in Cricket using Genetic Algorithm

Batting teams get two resources in cricket to score runs with, viz. wickets and balls. Trying to score as many runs as possible off every ball a team faces risks losing wickets. Trying to preserve wickets comes at the cost of not enough runs being scored. Thus, to maximize the runs scored, teams need to make efficient use of the balls and wickets available to them. To that end, teams primarily employ two types of batsmen-aggressive batsmen who try to score as many runs as possible off the balls they face and defensive batsmen who try to protect their wickets. Having too many aggressive batsmen helps a team score more runs off the balls they face but it stands the risk of a team losing all its wickets before they face all of their allotted balls. Having too many defensive batsmen helps a team face all the balls allotted to them but they may not end up scoring enough runs. Hence, selecting the right combination of defensive and aggressive batsmen is essential to maximize the runs a batting team scores. However, this is a computationally complex problem to solve. This study proposes the use of genetic algorithm to optimize the batting lineup of a team to help it maximize the runs scored in an innings. The test results indicate, by using the genetic algorithm, the number of runs scored batting first by the full member teams in the last five years can be improved by 5.46% on average.

Spatial Attendance Spillover in Football Leagues

We analyse the spatial attendance spillover applying spatial panel-data models with the Italian Football League data from 2001/2002 to 2016/2017. Our Quasi-Maximum Likelihood empirical results suggest that no significant spatial interaction was evident in earlier seasons (2001–2013), but modest spatial spillover was in play from 2013 to 2016. In addition, cross-quality spillover exists only locally in the same cities. We use numerical simulations to examine the potential impact of such spillover on attendance distribution and then competitive balance; spillover implies an interaction between the two exclusive markets that are the principal sources of competitive imbalance. Our numerical simulations suggest that spatial spillover may create attendance variations across member teams. The final outcome depends on the spillover sign, the network structure, and the market size distribution. Combining the empirical results with numerical simulations, we find that a recent, slightly positive spillover may modestly reduce attendance disparity.

Resident integration with inpatient clinical documentation improvement: a quality improvement project

BackgroundClinical documentation improvement (CDI) is an increasing part of health system quality and patient care with clinical documentation integrity specialists (CDIS) expanding into daily physician workflow. This integration can be...

Conversational Agents as Mediating Social Actors in Chronic Disease Management Involving Health Care Professionals, Patients, and Family Members: Multisite Single-Arm Feasibility Study.

BackgroundSuccessful management of chronic diseases requires a trustful collaboration between health care professionals, patients, and family members. Scalable conversational agents, designed to assist health care professionals, may play a significant role in supporting this collaboration in a scalable way by reaching out to the everyday lives of patients and their family members. However, to date, it remains unclear whether conversational agents, in such a role, would be accepted and whether they can support this multistakeholder collaboration.ObjectiveWith asthma in children representing a relevant target of chronic disease management, this study had the following objectives: (1) to describe the design of MAX, a conversational agent–delivered asthma intervention that supports health care professionals targeting child-parent teams in their everyday lives; and (2) to assess the (a) reach of MAX, (b) conversational agent–patient working alliance, (c) acceptance of MAX, (d) intervention completion rate, (e) cognitive and behavioral outcomes, and (f) human effort and responsiveness of health care professionals in primary and secondary care settings.MethodsMAX was designed to increase cognitive skills (ie, knowledge about asthma) and behavioral skills (ie, inhalation technique) in 10-15-year-olds with asthma, and enables support by a health professional and a family member. To this end, three design goals guided the development: (1) to build a conversational agent–patient working alliance; (2) to offer hybrid (human- and conversational agent–supported) ubiquitous coaching; and (3) to provide an intervention with high experiential value. An interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, asthma experts, and young patients with their parents developed the intervention collaboratively. The conversational agent communicates with health care professionals via email, with patients via a mobile chat app, and with a family member via SMS text messaging. A single-arm feasibility study in primary and secondary care settings was performed to assess MAX.ResultsResults indicated an overall positive evaluation of MAX with respect to its reach (49.5%, 49/99 of recruited and eligible patient-family member teams participated), a strong patient-conversational agent working alliance, and high acceptance by all relevant stakeholders. Moreover, MAX led to improved cognitive and behavioral skills and an intervention completion rate of 75.5%. Family members supported the patients in 269 out of 275 (97.8%) coaching sessions. Most of the conversational turns (99.5%) were conducted between patients and the conversational agent as opposed to between patients and health care professionals, thus indicating the scalability of MAX. In addition, it took health care professionals less than 4 minutes to assess the inhalation technique and 3 days to deliver related feedback to the patients. Several suggestions for improvement were made.ConclusionsThis study provides the first evidence that conversational agents, designed as mediating social actors involving health care professionals, patients, and family members, are not only accepted in such a “team player” role but also show potential to improve health-relevant outcomes in chronic disease management.

Action learning: challenges that impact employability skills

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceived value of an action learning experience (i-Week) on the development of important soft employability skills applying expectation confirmation theory (ECT). Design/methodology/approach A total of 1,295 activities were offered in 36 cities of ten countries. Each activity had a faculty member and multidisciplinary teams to address an authentic situation during one full-time week. The ECT was applied to assess the disparity between what was expected from the students and their actual learning experience. A total of 929 students answered a Perceived Value Questionnaire to measure 14 transversal competences categorized on five employability skills. Findings Achievements were statistically higher than expectations in 5 out of 14 transversal competences. The perceived value of the i-Week reflects the impact on soft skills: self-skills, personal, learning, social and systemic. The paper proposed an integrated model to learn these competences from action learning experiences. Research limitations/implications The questionnaire is a self-assessment and not an actual performance measure. Besides transversal competences, there were more disciplinary competences that are not included in the study. Practical implications The perceived value model of the i-Week could be applied for different educational levels and contexts considering a lower scale. A new version of the Perceived Value Questionnaire on Competences is provided for educational research. Originality/value The educational experience, instruments and analysis described in the study might be easily transferred to other action activity used to measure perceived learning results on multiple skills.

Team-Based Learning for Immunology Courses in Allied Health Programs.

Immunology is now a major component of studies in human biology, with many diseases having immune system involvement. Because so many areas of study include aspects of immunological knowledge, how to teach and incorporate immunology must be evaluated and assessed at all levels of education including K-12, undergraduate, graduate, medical, and professional programs. Traditional teaching methods such as lecture have significant shortcomings which make them less appealing to students today who are more digitally inclined and demand more active and engaging learning environments. Herein, we describe and propose the use of the active learning model of Team-Based Learning (TBL) to incorporate immunology into medical and professional programs. TBL is defined as an evidence based collaborative learning strategy taught in a three-step cycle: pre-class preparation, in-class readiness assurance testing (RAT), and application-focused exercises. In TBL, students are assigned to 6–7 member teams. Students complete the in-class RAT individually followed by taking the RAT as a team (T-RAT). Following the RAT and T-RAT, the instructor can then provide immediate feedback on concepts that proved especially difficult. The remainder of class time is then spent with teams working case studies and applications relative to the instructional topic or disease. Teams decide the best outcome or answer for a given application and report their answers simultaneously in class, followed by a discussion facilitated by the instructor. Research indicates that students involved in active learning classes, such as those using TBL have significantly increased levels of student engagement and high performance on examinations. This review will highlight how to implement TBL into a professional program (medical, dental, nursing, or pharmacy), how to assess student performance and provide real world examples of case studies and applications.

Healthcare providers’ perceptions of a situational awareness display for emergency department resuscitation: a simulation qualitative study

Emergency resuscitation of critically ill patients can challenge team communication and situational awareness. Tools facilitating team performance may enhance patient safety. To determine resuscitation team members' perceptions of the Situational Awareness Display's utility. We conducted focus groups with healthcare providers during Situational Awareness Display development. After simulations assessing the display, we conducted debriefs with participants. Dual site tertiary care level 1 trauma centre in Ottawa, Canada. We recruited by email physicians, nurses and respiratory therapist. Situational Awareness Display, a visual cognitive aid that provides key clinical information to enhance resuscitation team communication and situational awareness. Themes emerging from focus groups and simulation debriefs. Three reviewers independently coded and analysed transcripts using content qualitative analysis. We recruited a total of 33 participants in two focus groups (n = 20) and six simulation debriefs with three 4-5 member teams (n = 13). Majority of participants (10/13) strongly endorsed the Situational Awareness Display's utility in simulation (very or extremely useful). Focus groups and debrief themes included improved perception of patient data, comprehension of context and ability to project to future decisions. Participants described potentially positive and negative impacts on patient safety and positive impacts on provider performance and team communication. Participants expressed a need for easy data entry incorporated into clinical workflow and training on how to use the display. Emergency resuscitation team participants felt the Situational Awareness Display has potential to improve provider performance, team communication and situational awareness, ultimately enhancing quality of care.

American Needle and the Boundaries of the Firm in Antitrust Law

In American Needle the Supreme Court unanimously held that for the practice at issue the NFL should be treated as a “combination” of its teams rather than a single entity. However, the arrangement must be assessed under the rule of reason. The opinion, written by Justice Stevens, was almost certainly his last opinion for the Court in an antitrust case; Justice Stevens had been a dissenter in the Supreme Court’s Copperweld decision 25 years earlier, which held that a parent corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary constituted a single “firm” for antitrust purposes. The Sherman Act speaks to this issue but is not very helpful. Its § 6 defines the word “person” to “include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by” law, but gives no particulars. When antitrust tribunals decide if associations should be considered a single firm or a combination two factors stand out. One is whether the members remain as separate, significant economic actors in the marketplace. The ordinary corporation's shareholders do not and are thus unlike the members of a trade association, sports league, or the like. The second key factor is whether the challenged act controls or affects the individual market behavior of the members. In American Needle the conduct was exclusive licensing of the individually held trademark rights of each of the NFL’s member teams. These rights had been consolidated into a single holding company controlled by the NFL and then licensed exclusively to Reebok, thus ousting the plaintiff. While American Needle is important, its did not necessarily present the problems of antitrust micromanagement that concerned the Court. If the NFL were a single entity the case would be characterized as exclusive dealing, or more properly an output contract, in which the NFL licensed to Reebok and no one else. Such agreements are analyzed under the rule of reason and their illegality usually depends on a “foreclosure” analysis in which illegality depends on the extent to which the plaintiff has been denied access to a properly defined relevant market. Also significant is that American Needle involves a trademark license, and the justification for restricted licensing of trademarks can be weighty, particularly if issues of origin or quality control are present. Even if exclusive trademark licenses are desirable, however, each separate NFL team could have granted its own individual exclusive licenses, and apparel manufacturers could then compete for one or more of these contracts. Finally, the American Needle decision has important implications for other collaborative entities, including Visa and Mastercard, real estate associations, and hospitals whose staff members have independent practices. The relevant question in these cases is not whether otherwise competing firms control the activities of the collaborative entity, but rather whether the collaborative entity controls their independent business activities.

Intra-Enterprise Activity, Joint Ventures and Sports Leagues: Identifying Unilateral Conduct Under the Antitrust Laws

In the American Needle case the Supreme Court will consider whether the NFL’s decision to give an exclusive trademark license to one firm should be counted as “unilateral” on the NFL’s part, or rather as the concerted joint venture activity of the NFL’s individual member teams. The intellectual property in question is not trademarks in the NFL itself, but rather the trademarks and other intellectual property developed separately by each individual team, and which the teams in turn have licensed exclusively to the NFL.In general, when a joint venture is engaged in its own business the unilateral characterization is appropriate. Thus, for example, if the ABA decides to hold its convention in San Francisco rather than Chicago that decision should not ordinarily be treated as a “conspiracy” of the ABA’s members to boycott Chicago. By the same token, the NFL has many employees of its own, and labor disputes between those employees and the NFL would be considered as involving a single employer. By contrast, when disputes involving the players of individual teams are at issue the NFL is properly treated as a collaboration of employers, as the Supreme Court assumed to be the case in its Brown vs. Pro Football decision in 1996.A decision that the NFL is a joint venture of multiple firms when it is managing the separable business interests of the member teams need not result in per se illegality or, for that matter, not even in particularly harsh treatment. Output limiting restrictions by legitimate joint ventures are dealt with under the ancillary restraints doctrine and tested for reasonableness. The great majority of such restraints are reasonable and lawful. By contrast, even efficient joint ventures can become vehicles for the naked restraints of their members.

A Business Analysis of Asian Baseball Leagues

This study reviews previous research on sports economics and applied descriptive analyses to derive policy recommendations for the Korean Baseball Organization and the Nippon Professional Baseball. We discuss various aspects of the contemporary baseball business, and compare them with the American Major League Baseball (MLB). One distinctive characteristic common to both Asian leagues is the governance structure, where member teams are owned by major conglomerates. We explore this characteristic to assess the business objectives of the Korean Baseball Organization and the Nippon Professional Baseball, and find that their sources of competitive balance differ from those in MLB. Our conclusion suggests that their business objective should begin to move slowly toward one similar to that of MLB, and safeguards should be implemented to maintain a reasonable competitive balance. We also conclude that sports diplomacy and the creation of international competition are important because international competition and the success of national teams are critical for fan demand.

The Supreme Court and the NCAA: The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports by Brian L. Porto (review)

Reviewed by: The Supreme Court and the NCAA: The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports by Brian L. Porto Joy Blanchard Brian L. Porto. The Supreme Court and the NCAA: The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2012. 264 pp. Hardcover: $50.00. ISBN-13: 978-0472118045. The NCAA was founded in 1906 as a result of the rampant violence, injuries, and deaths occurring in intercollegiate athletics, particularly football. Today the NCAA must regulate vice of a different kind: hypercommercialization, rules infractions, and an overall culture that values winning above all else. In The Supreme Court and the NCAA: The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports, Brian Porto, an attorney, an associate professor of law at Vermont Law School, and a former collegiate athlete, examines two U.S. Supreme Court cases that paved the way for college sports to become the unwieldy—and, at times, seemingly unmanageable—enterprise that it is today. Recognizing that the amateur values of college sports have been seriously eroded in favor of commercialization and television contracts, [End Page 406] Porto frames his argument for an “educational exemption” to antitrust laws around the landmark decisions in NCAA v. Board of Regents (1984) and NCAA v. Tarkanian (1988). He provides an incredibly rich and thorough analysis of the cases, from the climate in college sports that precipitated such litigation to judicial procedural history and court testimony. Although the connections are not always clear and at times tenuous, Porto attempts to link the antitrust case in Regents to the due process issue in Tarkanian. His intention is to argue that the desire to win at all costs (precipitated by the huge revenues now available after Regents) has increased academic fraud and lowered graduation rates among athletes and has made NCAA enforcement difficult and sometimes unfair—as institutions are quick to sacrifice athletes and employees (as in Tarkanian) in order to avoid stiffer sanctions. Before Regents, the NCAA controlled how many times—and for how much money—college football teams could appear on television. Antitrust laws were enacted to protect consumers; the NCAA plan restricted the number of games fans could enjoy and failed to allow top-tier programs to benefit in the marketplace from their notoriety. The NCAA was fearful that too many televised games would dilute the “product” and reduce ticket sales, when actually, the proliferation of the game on television inevitably increased institutions’ fan base and ticket sales skyrocketed. Today, college football continues to be a huge vehicle by which universities can increase their donor base through their fan base (Toma, 2004). Porto pinpoints the decision in Regents as the start of an “arms race” in terms of salaries, recruits, and conference realignments. More than 40 institutions changed conference affiliations in the 10 years following Regents. That problem continues today. In recent seasons, once-steady conferences such as the Big XII have been diluted by the lure for mega television contracts. While the NCAA had tried to keep exposure and revenue at parity among its member teams, Porto noted that Regents began a clear bifurcation of athletic conferences as “haves” and “have nots.” In his dissent, Justice Byron (“Whizzer”) White, himself a famed college and professional football player, predicted: “Permitting a small number of colleges, even popular ones, to have unlimited television appearances, would inevitably give them an insuperable advantage over all others and in the end defeat any efforts to maintain a system of athletic competition among amateurs who measure up to college scholastic requirements” (p. 81). As a result of Regents, the professional and financial stakes are higher for coaches and players. Today 25 coaches earn more than $2 million, and student-athletes’ value in the professional ranks is often decided by their success and exposure in the college game. Because of this intensification, Porto then examines the decision in Tarkanian, in which the NCAA ordered UNLV to fire its then-head basketball coach or face stiffer sanctions for NCAA rules infractions. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA is a private association and not a “state actor” under...

Team establishment of self‐managed work teams: a model from the field

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a model of team establishment that emerged from 64 teams comprised of mid‐career working professionals.Design/methodology/approachA total of 64 similarly configured 18 member teams assembled for work on the same day and, thereafter, worked on similar tasks. A single representative team was observed throughout its process of its formation‐establishment‐using participant observation and interviews. A case report describing the process was co‐constructed afterward. Individuals from remaining teams systematically compared/contrasted their experience with the case report. Qualitative analysis of 874 responses provides the basis for this paper.FindingsTeams formed very differently than expected. A highly dynamic and rapid process was seen. The model suggests interplay between ongoing assessment of the context and organizing for work while norms emerge and work is performed.Research limitations/implicationsIndividual comparisons/contrasts with the case report, unlike the case report itself, were not the result of prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, and co‐construction processes. The research focus was on team development; implications for performance are not addressed.Practical implicationsLeaders can influence the speed of establishment through intentionality during the establishment phase. The rapid establishment process that emerged here may have application across a wider range of work settings—especially where members are experienced in working collaboratively.Originality/valueThe model of team establishment has likely application in other settings. The study also suggests the valuable insights that study informants can contribute to research.

American Needle and the Future of the Single Entity Defense Under Section One of the Sherman Act

In American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, the United States Supreme Court held that the NFL’s decision to collectively license the trademarks of its thirty-two member teams constituted concerted activity subject to Section One of the Sherman Act, a provision targeting the combined activities of two or more actors. In the process, the Court rejected the NFL’s argument that its teams collectively operated as a “single entity” outside the scope of Section One. Although much of the commentary regarding American Needle has focused on the opinion’s likely impact on the professional sports industry, this Article contends that the decision will ultimately play a more significant role in cases involving the application of the so-called “single entity defense” to other industries. Marking the first time in 26 years that the Supreme Court addressed the scope of the single entity theory under Section One, the American Needle opinion raises questions regarding the soundness of some lower court single entity precedents. However, because American Needle did not provide a straightforward analytical framework for courts to apply when delineating between independent and concerted action, lower courts will likely struggle to consistently resolve single entity cases in the future. In particular, the single entity status of certain joint ventures remains unsettled following American Needle. This article asserts that the Supreme Court could (and should) have adopted a clearer standard for future courts to apply when deciding single entity cases, in particular one that provided guidance regarding the single entity status of joint ventures. Meanwhile, although this article takes issue with certain of the Court’s findings regarding the nature of professional sports leagues, it ultimately concludes that the decision is unlikely to have a significant impact on the antitrust regulation of the industry, insofar as American Needle largely reaffirmed the status quo.

A new level of complexity in the male alliance networks of Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops sp.)

Male bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia form two levels of alliances; two to three males cooperate to herd individual females and teams of greater than three males compete with other groups for females. Previous observation suggested two alliance tactics: small four to six member teams of relatives that formed stable pairs or trios and unrelated males in a large 14-member second-order alliance that had labile trio formation. Here, we present evidence for a third level of alliance formation, a continuum of second-order alliance sizes and no relationship between first-order alliance stability and second-order alliance size. These findings challenge the 'two alliance tactics' hypothesis and add to the evidence that Shark Bay male bottlenose dolphins engage in alliance formation that likely places considerable demands on their social cognition.

Teams for Teams Performance in Multi-Human/Multi-Robot Teams

The present study addresses the interaction between automation and organization of human teams in controlling large robot teams performing an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) task. We identify three subtasks: perceptual - visual search for victims, assistance - teleoperation to assist robot, and navigation - path planning and coordination. For the studies reported, navigation was selected for automation because it involves weak dependencies among robots making it more complex and because it was shown in an earlier experiment to be the most difficult. Two possible ways to organize operators were identified as assignment of robots to particular operators or as a shared pool in which operators service robots from the population as needed. The experiment compares two member teams of operators controlling teams of 12 robots each, in the assigned robots conditions or sharing control of 24 robots in the shared pool conditions using either waypoint control or autonomous path planning. Automating path planning improved system performance. Effects of team organization were equivocal.

Engineering Service Learning with Green Information Technology and Systems Projects

It is well established that university engineering students are capable of concrete contributions to sustainable development while improving their academic skills by undertaking service learning (SL) projects tailored for the content of the course. These SL projects can normally be classified as: 1) collaborations with a community group or non-profit organization to provide specific engineering design or construction around a community need, or 2) an internship-like experience with industry in which students provide solicited work for a client. The limitation of both of these approaches is that they do not prepare students to implement projects that are not prescribed. This paper presents the findings for a novel pedagogical exercise in which students were assigned SL projects in which they were to act as change agents for industry by implementing unsolicited energy conservation measures (ECMs) to improve the environmental performance of an organization. These ECMs focused on green information technology and systems (IT/S) SL projects, which were integrated into a 4 year mechanical engineering elective in engineering for sustainable development. The projects were broken into two components – a virtual and a real SL project. For the virtual component, the students used Appropedia.org, an appropriate technology wiki, to coordinate the five member teams and to develop and publish ECMs utilizing green IT/S. The ECMs created by students were constructed from templates, which had been developed by a multi-disciplinary team made up of representatives from economics, engineering, environmental studies, and management information systems. The ECMs were then open sourced and made available for any organization to use to economically and environmentally justify improvements in IT/S. For the second component, the student teams self-selected industry clients and obtained permission to perform IT/S energy audits of the organizations. After performing the audits, the teams selected among the ECMs developed by the class to make recommendations to the organizations. Preliminary results are presented and discussed and conclusions are drawn on the effectiveness of such hybridization projects to SL in engineering.

Competition and Cooperation between Professional Sports Franchises: The Impact on Ticket Prices

An important issue in many antitrust lawsuits involving professional sports leagues and their member teams is the extent to which franchises within the same, and across different, professional sports leagues compete with one another for fans and advertisers. Complicating the issue is the fact that some sports franchises also cooperate with other franchises in the same or different leagues by, for example, participating in a joint venture to build and operate the stadium in which they will play their games or a regional sports network joint venture to televise their games. An extreme form of cooperation is common ownership: some franchises in different sports leagues have common ownership. This study investigates the impact of competition and cooperation among the franchises of the four major professional sports leagues (i.e., the National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball) on ticket prices for the 2008 season. The regression results suggest that the existence of one or more rival sports franchises in the same metropolitan area does not have a statistically significant impact on ticket prices. On the other hand, there is at best weak evidence that cooperation between sports franchises impacts ticket prices. These findings are consistent with a number of alternative hypotheses.

American Needle, Dagher, and the Evolving Antitrust Theory of the Firm: What Will Become of Section 1?

This summer, on the last regularly scheduled sitting of its October 2008 Term, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a case that could have far-reaching consequences throughout the law of Sherman Act Section 1. In the case under review, American Needle, Inc. v. NFL, the Seventh Circuit, by unanimous panel decision, entered a striking ruling in the long-running debate over whether professional sports leagues can be “single entities” under Copperweld. The court not only said yes, but did so in what is possibly the most likely context in which the member teams could have competed with one another - the licensing of their trademarked logos to makers of sports memorabilia. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the question whether defendant National Football League acts as a single entity as to this conduct. Among the decision’s most important consequences will be what it has to say about another recent decision, the underappreciated 2006 ruling in Texaco Inc. v. Dagher. If the Court reverses in American Needle, it may signal that Dagher is to be a narrow decision, limited to a fairly peculiar set of facts. If the Court affirms, and particularly if it does so in explicit reliance on Dagher, then American Needle could, as a practical matter, do significant damage to the enforceability of Section 1 of the Sherman Act; it could in effect immunize significant swaths of concerted conduct among competitors. It would imply that comparatively unintegrated arrangements, like trademark licensing agreements among the NFL member teams, are just as “economically integrated” as the defendants’ joint venture in Dagher. In short order we would see horizontal arrangements throughout the economy purporting to have “integrated” around some shared common purpose. Currently, no Supreme Court case gives very clear guidance as to how courts are to distinguish the actions of “integrated” joint ventures from those subject to at least rule of reason analysis under Section 1, and as will be suggested below, it is hard to imagine how those lines could be drawn. So as a worst-case scenario, the effect of affirmance of the Seventh Circuit’s decision in reliance on Dagher could be something like repeal of Section 1 as to wide-ranging horizontal conduct, other than the hardest-core, naked price fixing and market allocations.

The Myth of Scheduling Bias With Back-to-Back Games in the NBA

The National Basketball Association (NBA) league office determines the playing schedule for its member teams and in doing so assigns an unequal number of games played on consecutive nights (back-to-back games). Although NBA coaches privately complain of a bias in the scheduling of these types of games, a study of five seasons of data show that no bias exists. Although differences in the number of back-to-back games do result in a slight variation in competitive balance, one positive externality is that these type games reduce travel costs by millions of dollars per year.