Incentivizing Running Up the Score
My latest Verdict column explains why it makes a difference whether Democrats win the Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi, even though the difference between 54, 55, and 56 Senate seats might seem inconsequential, given that 51 would get them a simple majority and any of those numbers is less than the 60 needed to break a filibuster and much less than the 67 needed to overcome a presidential veto. What I have to say also pertains to the importance of having won Michigan and thus undercuts the claim by future Dancing with the Stars performer Haley Stevens that the Democrats could have afforded to lose the Michigan Senate race. As I argue in the column, additional Senate votes matter for the Senate that will convene in January because they provide a cushion against Democratic defections and make it easier to form coalitions with defecting Republicans. Further, each additional Senate seat won in 2026 affects the number of Senators who assemble in January 2029 and January 2031, when one seat could be the difference between being below or above a key threshold.
Accordingly, my column concludes that every Senate vote counts. To illustrate, I point to the flaw in the logic of Shaquille O'Neal, who used to say that despite being a generally bad free throw shooter he "made them when they count," meaning near the end of close games. As I note, that wasn't true, but even if it were, it wouldn't make any sense, because they all count: a free throw in the first quarter is worth the same one point as a free throw with six seconds remaining in a tie game, and the outcome depends equally on points scored throughout the game.
My column also refers to another concept from sports: the notion of "running up the score" in a game, which is generally considered unsporting. If victory is a foregone conclusion, a basketball coach who is a good sport will pull the starters, and, as the clock winds down, players will dribble out the clock. Likewise in other respects in other sports. For the balance of today's post, I want to say a few words about these ideas in their native context.
In various circumstances, running up the score isn't gratuitous because margin of victory matters. Three of the main four U.S. men's professional sports leagues (NBA, NFL, and NHL, but not MLB) use net points as a tiebreaker for playoff eligibility and seeding, but they are very far down in the list of criteria. Nonetheless, I found a handful of instances when total points made a difference in the NFL, including, most dramatically in 1979:
On the last day of the season [the Washington team] lost a 35-34 doozy to Dallas. In combination with Chicago's 42-6 victory over St. Louis, the Bears advanced to a wild-card berth instead of the [Washington team] on the basis of the Bears having accumulated four more net points in all games that season. The normally conservative Bears pulled a fake field goal, a fake punt and a double-reverse pass to pile up points against the Cardinals; then-[Washington] coach Jack Pardee, who had ordered his team to run out the clock in an earlier game, was apoplectic.
Notably, however, point difference was the third tie-breaker at the time, whereas under the NFL's current rules, no consideration of point difference, total points, or touchdowns comes in to break any type of tie until after at least seven prior other tiebreakers fail to break the tie. Thus, with one exception, in major U.S. sports, there is very little incentive during a regular season game for a team to run up the score.
The exception is the NBA Cup--the in-season tournament the league implemented in 2023. For the NBA Cup, point difference (described in the official rules inaccurately as "point differential") is the second tie-breaker (after head-to-head results) while total points is the third tie-breaker. Because each team plays other teams in its pool only once, it is relatively easy for there to be a three-way tie in which team A has beaten team B, B has beaten C, and C has beaten A, putting point difference and total points into play. Point difference and total points also operate as, respectively, the first and second tiebreakers for wild-card eligibility. Unsurprisingly, then, in the first three years of the NBA Cup, point difference was used as a tiebreaker six times. Equally unsurprisingly, in NBA Cup games, one sees teams trying to run up the score or, if trailing by a wide margin, trying to cut into that margin, even when it has no impact on the outcome of the particular game.
I'll return to the NBA Cup momentarily, but first I'll note three other structures in current U.S. sport that incentivize running up the score.
One is the system for selecting college football teams for the 12-team playoff. At least half of the teams that make the playoff receive at-large bids based on a selection committee's evaluations. Officially, point difference isn't a criterion, but given that selection committee members won't have watched every minute of every game, in evaluating statistics it will be difficult to distinguish a touchdown scored in the first quarter from one late in a game with a lopsided margin. Thus, there are incentives to run up the score. That will remain true next year. In the never-ending quest to maximize both revenue and injuries, next year there will be a 24-team playoff. The selection process for the expanded tournament will be more mechanical because of the large role that team rankings will play but point difference can affect rankings and thus indirectly affect playoff eligibility and seeding. Thus, the incentive to run up the score will remain.
Even if point difference plays no direct or indirect role in a team's eligibility for or seeding in playoffs, it can affect performance in two additional ways, one licit, the other illicit. The licit way it affects matters is through incentives for individual players. Some professional contracts contain express incentives based on statistical accomplishments that incentivize players to give their all even in contests that have been effectively decided. Even without such express incentives, players who wish to strengthen their position in future bargaining will want their individual statistics to look as good as possible, which can incentivize late-game scoring in already-decided contests. (It can also have other effects. Thus, in recent years, NBA players would frequently not bother heaving the ball for a very-low-percentage shot at the end of a quarter for fear that the almost-inevitable miss would depress their shooting percentage. The NBA responded last season by making such shots not count against individual player stats.)
The illicit factor is the proliferation of sports gambling in general and prop betting in particular. In the old days, a gambler who wanted to gain an unfair advantage had to pay a player to shave points (against the spread) or, even more of a challenge, to throw the game. Only certain key players were in a position to accomplish either, and even then, it was never a sure thing. Now, however, with prop bets on just about everything, a gambler can provide individual players with incentives to score or, even more problematically, not score.
Putting aside all of the ways in which gambling is ruining sports and the lives of the people doing the gambling, I want to return to the matter of running up the score. Some commentators on NBA Cup games have said that the fact that the players continue to fight for every last point makes the games more exciting. Whether that's so is, I suppose, a matter of taste. If one is watching a game for the love of the sport, a great play late in a game whose outcome is certain can be as exciting as a similar play early in a game--and perhaps more so if it is known that a team needs to reach some particular margin of victory to advance in the tournament. The question then is at what cost.
To answer that question, one needs some idea of what it means to be a good sport and why we value it. I can't answer for everyone, but as a competitor and coach, I've always understood the essence of sportsmanship (or whatever the gender-neutral term is) to be respect for one's opponent and a kind of reciprocal humility. Anyone who has been on the short end of a lopsided contest knows how unpleasant the experience is. A norm against running up the score is a way of asserting that the victors in a particular athletic contest do not regard the losing side as inferior or worthy of humiliation. Preserving a norm against running up the score thus strikes me as a noble effort to resist the cruelty that one encounters in too many other parts of our culture. Hence, wherever possible, sports rules should be structured so as not to create incentives to run up the score.
-- Michael C. Dorf