PolicyGuy
This blog is semi-retired, but I'm adding always adding new items to the portfolio page.

Monday, December 29, 2003


Democracy and Football
How is the method of determining the national championship of big-time college football like republican government? Jeffrey H. Anderson explains why.

By using both expert opinion (computer models that focus on win-loss records) and popular opinion (surveys of football coaches and sports writers, which are in theory more subjective), the BCS ranking system steers a middle ground between majority and elite rule. Anderson, a professor of political science at the Air Force Academy, runs one of the seven computers used in the BCS.

Even if you're not a football fan, the controversy over which teams should meet which for a championship game (and more importantly, how they are determined) shows how political and popular culture are intertwined.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'’s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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