Why Is Half the Football Team in My Class?

March 10, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

In the previous post, I quoted Ann Coulter’s scornful put-down of Keith Olbermann’s academic credentials – a degree in Communications from the agricultural college at Cornell.

“Communications” is a major, along with “recreation science,” most commonly associated with linemen at USC.*

Apparently Coulter’s column isn’t fact-checked, for in reality (maybe her column isn’t reality-checked either) those USC footballers are much more likely to major in Sociology.

Last fall, USA today published data showing the clustering of athletes (juniors and seniors only) into certain majors. At some schools, it was Interdisciplinary Studies (LSU, ASU). At USC, 57% of the football team (22 out of 38) were majoring in Sociology. Other football teams that clustered in Sociology included

• Florida State (54%)
• Hawaii (47%)
• Oklahoma (44%)
• SMU (48%)
• Duke (40%)

Here’s a screen shot of the interactive chart USA Today published. The darkness of the blue shading indicates the degree of concentration of majors. That dark blue rectangle at the end of Social Science is the 80% of the LSU basketball team that are majoring in Sociology (four out of five players – a small N but a tall one.)

(Click on the chart for a larger view.)

At the actual site, as you drag the mouse over each rectangle, it reveals the information (school, sport, major, percentage, N).

It would be nice to have some more information how athletes make these decisions. Why does the basketball team cluster in one major while the football team prefers another? And why do jocks on some teams or at some schools go their own way?

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* I guess Recreation Science is what used to be called Phys. Ed.

There’s an anecdote – it may even be true – about Joe Namath, who had come from Alabama with a huge (for its time) signing bonus on his dubious knee to play for the New York Jets. At a press conference, one of the New York sports reporters asks, “So what’d you major in at Alabama, Phys.Ed.?”

“Nah,” says Namath, “I wasn’t smart enough for Phys.Ed. I majored in journalism.”

Elitism - Ivies and Aggies

March 8, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

I had thought that Republicans had cornered the market on anti-elitism. Any time the Democrats let slip some hint of “elitism” – the notion that one thing might actually be better than another – the Republicans pick it up and beat them over the head with it like something from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Why not? Anti-elitism is part of the American value on equality. (See earlier posts on anti-elitism here and here .)

So you can imagine the reaction when one public figure who went to the “real” Cornell dumps on someone else who attended merely the Cornell agricultural college and majored in communications.

I would venture to say that the students at a third-tier law school are far more impressive than those at the Cornell agriculture school – the land-grant, non-Ivy League school he attended.

He went to Cornell. But he always forgets to mention that he went to the school that offers classes in milking and bovine management.

He didn't go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell.
It’s like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a “Yale man.”

The real Cornell, the School of Arts and Sciences (average SAT: 1,325; acceptance rate: 1 in 6 applicants), is the only Ivy League school at Cornell and the only one that grants a Bachelor of Arts degree.

He went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).
“Communications” is a major, along with “recreation science,” most commonly associated with linemen at USC.

He should thank me for revealing all this. Finally, he can stop pretending that he went to the hard-to-get-into Cornell.

Now he won't have to quickly change the subject whenever people idly remark that they didn't know it was possible to major in “communications” at an Ivy League school.

You can imagine what the conservative commentators would do with a blatantly elitist statement like this.

But wait. The person who wrote it is a conservative commentator. Ann Coulter. Her target is Keith Olbermann. (This isn’t a verbatim transcript. I took out the identifying names, and added a transition here and there.)

Coulter is a graduate of the Ivy League Cornell.* But it’s not just Olbermann and other Ag School people that she looks down on. A sidebar on her website disdains people who the Times describes as “ordinary.” The word Coulter prefers is “repellent.

Even the NYT Can’t Make “Swingers" Sound Anything Other Than Repellent

She reprints the Times headline and four brief excerpts.

At a Sex Club, the Outré Meet the Ordinary

. . . hairy-chested buzzards to Spandex matrons from the suburbs.
. . . a couple in their 60s went at it nonchalantly near buffet trays of ziti.
. . . a small, round woman
. . . the unassuming features of your fellow passenger on the bus.

Apparently, not all elitism is repugnant to the Republicans, for they love Ann Coulter. I guess it’s a case of “she’s an elitist, but she’s our elitist.

* I wonder which of these two Cornell grads two nights ago was more enthusiastic – or even knew – about the Big Red clinching a spot at the NCAA.)

The Association - XKCD version

March 6, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

Last week, I criticized the way the press had played up an article on rap music and sex. The article implied cause where the article had established only “association.” I speculated that the reporters hadn’t taken even a basic course in sociology or statistics. I guess they don’t read XKCD either.


Or is it really about post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Mapping Mortgages

March 6, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

USA Today had maps showing the rise in overpriced houses – mortgages that were more than four times the applicant’s income – 2000 to 2007.

)Click on the image for a larger view.)

At the USA Today website , you drag a slider over the map to change from one to the other – cool technically but not especially useful.

I wondered if there might be any similarity between the 2007 map and the county map of the Presidential election.


It’s hard to tell from just looking. If there is a correlation, it’s probably driven by the swath down the middle of the country – light blue for affordable mortgages, Republican red in the election – but I don’t have the original data. And remember, these are counties, not houses or voters. That large geographic area probably accounts for far fewer of each than do the areas east and west of it.