Who wants to be a commissioner?

Being a commissioner seems like it should be a great job. You're in charge of a sport that you presumably love. You get to attend any game of that sport, and probably most of any other sport as well. You know all the owners, players, etc.

But then there is the downside, summed up as public relations. Right now we have Bud Selig dealing with the unpopular Bonds, David Stern dealing with crooked refs, and Roger Goodell dealing with troublesome atheletes. Then you have Gary Bettman dealing with a lack of media attention, but thats a whole different problem.

Steroids are a problem, but I don't want to go into that topic in this post. Also, the majority of people only seem to care when it comes to records. No one pays any attention when Matt Lawton or Jason Grimsley get suspended. The Michael Vick and Pac Man Jones problems in the NFL are stupid individual players and to the NFL's credit, they are quick to suspend players for off-field activities. The NFL as a business is such a juggernaut that they will not be affected as long as they don't let people like Vick play.

The worst of these is obviously the ref betting on basketball games. If there is one thing any sport needs its impartial judges/refs/umps. A ref who does this once is impossible to catch, but those who are consistently altering point spreads can be monitored to some extent. First, if the spreads for games by one ref change more than expected, this can be a problem. Secondly, if the final score (in relation to the spread) does not follow the pattern of other refs, this should also be flagged. Here's a link to an article talking about an example of using data to watch a ref. Warning: its an ESPN article written for the layman, not a statistical article. There is a link to some data for games he reffed, but without the same data for other refs its kind of useless. If I find that data anywhere, I'll be sure to post it.

Of course, basketball is not the first sport to have issues with refs (recall the figure skating fiasco from recent olympics). And if this is truly the only ref involved, the league will be ok, but if not they better have some great PR guys.

I think that basketball is probably one of the most likely sports to be victim to this corruption. Primarily because calling a foul leads directly to points, the amount depends on who shoots the free throws. In baseball, the home plate ump will affect balls and strikes, but other umps have maybe 1 or 2 close plays a game, which is not reliable enough for someone trying to fix a game. Plus, betting in baseball is not nearly what it is for basketball or football. In football, refs can throw flags, but this does not directly lead to points. Plus the point system in football makes games harder to control. If you help the offense, they may score 3 or 7, but you can't necessarily control which one.

Overall, I'd probably still want to be a baseball commissioner, I'd just need to drink more to deal with the stress.

UPDATE - I rarely ever trust online polls, but there is currently a poll on CNN-SI's website asking people to vote for what they think is the worst form of cheating in sports. Option 1 is gambling/point shaving and option 2 is steroids/drugs (steroids are drugs, so I don't entirely get that one) and option 3 is other. As of about 1:15, option 1 has 65% and option 2 has 33%. This is somewhat surprising to me that drugs is getting that many votes. Doing steroids may be cheating, but fixing a sporting event makes it an exhibition, not a sport at all. I wonder how the poll results would differ if the HR record was not in the forefront of the media.