Why You Need a "Plan B" Income Stream?

What would happen if you were furloughed, terminated or if your job shut down? Do you have a back up income stream?  

In this video I share why it is important to have a Plan B Income Stream and a viable option.

Making Money Matters Manageable,

Tarra Jackson

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The Governance of Sport - My Spring 2014 Syllabus

I have just finished up a ready-for-viewing version of my syllabus for my brand-new Spring 2014 course -- University of Colorado-Boulder: ETHN 3104, The Governance of Sport.

Here is the course description:

Overview and Purpose of the Course

The goal of this course is to introduce students to issues of governance in various societal settings as viewed through the lens of sport. As Jens Sejer Andersen has noted, “Sport is an expression of civilization.” Through readings, discussions and individual and group projects students will engage a wide range of scholarly and popular literature, film and guest speakers to critically engage important issues that arise in the governance of sport. In this year’s course case studies that we will engage include the role of technological augmentation in sport, policies delineating participation eligibility in the Olympics according to gender, societal and policy responses to concussions in the NFL, equity in journalism related to sports reporting, genetics and athletic performance, doping in sport, sport as a laboratory for understanding prediction and decision making, and gender equity in sport and beyond. The student should emerge from this class with tools of critical thinking and analysis, along with greater substantive knowledge of various interesting and important cases in the governance of sport.  This course is designed to be intellectually challenging but also rewarding.

The course is an experiment of sorts as part of an emerging certificate program here at the University of Colorado-Boulder in "Critical Sports Studies." The syllabus is very much (but not completely) US focused and leaves more on the cutting-room floor than on the syllabus, yet at the same time, it asks a lot of the students.

The syllabus can be found here in PDF.

Your comments/suggestions most welcomed!

A Deeper Look at FIFA Reform

The second installment of my analysis of FIFA reform is now up at Play the Game.

Some key findings and conclusions:

1. 1. Overall FIFA adopted 7 of 59 recommendations (from TI, Pieth and the FIFA IGC) and partially adopted 10 others, leaving 42 unimplemented.
2. 2. In a nutshell, the common characteristics of the proposed reforms not adopted are that they involved (a) sharing authority and control for FIFA decision making with FIFA outsiders, (b) the imposition of external standards of governance on the organization or (c) the opening up of the organization to greater transparency in areas outside the disbursement of FIFA funding to member organizations.
3. I provide a list of nine topics which covers almost all of the 42 recommendations which went unimplemented. (see link below for this list)
4. Assuming full and successful implementation of the proposed reforms in these nine areas would have raised FIFA’s score under the Chappelet-Mrkonjic framework to a level almost exactly equal to their score for the governance IOC -- up to a C level, still far from an A grade.
5. Even with complete implementation of the recommendations by Transparency International, Mark Pieth and the IGC, FIFA would still have a considerable challenge remaining in raising FIFA governance to widely accepted best practices
6. Despite the obviosu shortfall, it is also fair to conclude that several of the reforms which FIFA did implement may indeed be important achievements, such as the establishment of new ethics and audit & compliance committees, with the introduction of (at least partially) independent chairs.

The analysis in full can be found here:

At Play the Game 2013 in a few weeks I will complete the analysis by suggesting several recommendations for next steps in FIFA reform for those who are outside the organization yet would like to see the organization improve its governance practices.

Eligibility and National Teams

Jack Wilshire, the Arsenal and England footballer, opened up a flood of commentary when he commented, apparently of Adnan Januzaj (who introduced himself to England and the world with 2 great goals for Manchester United last week), that,

"The only people who should play for England are English people. If you've lived in England for five years, for me, it doesn't make you English. You shouldn't play. It doesn't mean you can play for that country. If I went to Spain and lived there for five years, I'm not going to play for Spain. For me an English player should play for England really." 

Wilshire's comments come on the heels of revelations that England would look favorably on Januzaj attaining eligibility to play for England, presumably via securing British citizenship:

Football Association chairman Greg Dyke has revealed discussions have started regarding eligibility boundaries as the debate over Manchester United teenager Adnan Januzaj representing England rages on.

The Belgium-born winger has risen to prominence after his two goals at Sunderland and is available to play for the country of his birth, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Turkey.

Januzaj could also represent the England team in 2018 on residency grounds if he remains in the country for the next five years, with manager Roy Hodgson confirming he would be interested in selecting the winger if he became eligible.

The general question here is who should be eligible to play for which national team, a question make slightly more complicated because some "national" teams don't even represent nations -- England being a prime example. There are actually 10 members of FIFA whose citizens hold British nationality and 5 members who hold US citizenship.

Nationality designation is a rule, like any other constitutive decision process in sports governance -- like rules of play, or rules governing doping or rules governing World Cup site selection. As such the rules are perceived to be better or worse, and are open to re-negotiation.

The rule that Wilshire apparently dislikes comes from FIFA, and covers the conditions under which a player can change eligibility, which was actually not possible (in the modern era at least) before 2004 (source Omar Ongaro: PDF). That language evolved up to 2008, since which time is has been unchanged:

 a) He was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
 b) His biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of  the relevant Association;
 c) His grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
 d) He has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant Association.

 The five year residency period used byFIFA conveniently is one year longer than the World Cup cycle, ensuring that a star player in one World Cup cannot show up playing for another team in the next. The five year period is also the same time period required under British law for acquiring British citizenship.

Showing how sensitive Wilshire's comments were, British cricket player Kevin Pietersen -- born in South Africa, has an English mother and lived in England for 4 years before playing for England -- tweeted the following:

.@JackWilshere -interested to know how you define foreigner...? Would that include me, Strauss, Trott, Prior, Justin Rose, Froome, Mo Farah?
— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) October 9, 2013

Football obviously has meanings to people that evoke deep (and sometimes even unhealthy) feelings of nationalism and even ethnic pride. These issues get wrapped up in what it means to play for  England -- or any team for that matter -- in a way that takes the issue far beyond the bloodless texts of constitutive decision making.

While Wilshire's sentiment may be romantic, I'd guess that Dyke's pragmatism will ultimately win out. On this note Pietersen had the last laugh:

.@JackWilshere I reckon the FA are just wanting to try out what's worked for Cricket, Golf & Athletics. They all win trophies & medals! Ha
— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) October 10, 2013

Frontline on NFL Concussion Crisis

The Proposed Reforms from FIFA's IGC 2012 Report Unimplemented by FIFA

Below you can find the recommendations made by the FIFA IGC in its first report (here in PDF) which I have identified as having not been adopted by FIFA in its reform process. These recommendations comprise part of the reform evaluation which I recent discussed at Play the Game back in June and to which FIFA responded to here.

Overall, I identified 20 recommendations in the IGC report. Of those 20, FIFA failed to even partially implement 9 of them (with 5 implemented and 6 partially implemented). Those 9 unimplemented recommendations are listed below, to aid in discussion and (ideally) debate. 

Questions worth thinking about include: Which ones are most important? Which ones are secondary? Which may be off the mark? Comments welcomed either here or via email.

I've blogged on the unimplemented recommendations from the Transparency International report Safe Hands: Building Transparency and Integrity at FIFA and the unimplemented recommendations of Mark Pieth's 2011 paper Governing FIFA. This post completes the series. Next week I will discuss them together.

Here are the 9 unimplemented recommendations:

1. First and foremost it is fundamental that nominees for senior FIFA positions are vetted by an independent Nominations Committee, to be put in place as soon as possible, in order to ensure that candidates for the next elections fulfill the necessary substantive criteria and ethical requirements and that the selection process is fair and transparent.
2. it is furthermore fundamental that the Chairs of the Nomination Committee and the Audit & Compliance Committee have a seat in the Executive Committee
3. The  initial  candidates  for  [The  Chairs and Deputy  Chairs of  the Investigatory Chamber  and  the  Adjudicatory  Chamber]  should  be  selected  and  proposed  by  the  IGC
4. The  Secretariat  of  the  Ethics  Committee  should    directly  report  to    the  Chairs  of  the    investigatory  chamber  and  the  adjudicatory    chamber  respectively    and  should  be    independent  from  management;
5. "In  the  area  of  Compensation & Benefits, the  Audit & Compliance Committee  should  have the following main  responsibilities:

• Define  the  overall  Compensation  &    Benefits  strategy  of  FIFA;  
• Decide  on  the  Compensation  &    Benefits  of  the  President,  the  Executive  Committee    Members,  the  Secretary    General  and  the  Independent  Members  of  Standing    Committees;  
• Transparency:  The  Compensation    &  Benefits  (including  all  elements  such  as  regular & variable  compensation  components,  benefits,  pension  fund  contributions, severance/termination  regulation  and    payments)  of  the  above  listed    positions should  be  individually  and  annually  reported  to  the  Congress;  
• Regulations  should  be  adopted  containing  the  strategy  and  criteria  for    Compensation  &  Benefits; 

6. In  order  to  support    their  supervisory    function,  the    Chairs  of  the    Audit  &  Compliance    Committee    and    the  Nomination  Committee  should  participate  in  the  meetings  of  the  Executive  Committee;  they    should  therefore  have  a  seat  in    the  Executive    Committee.
7. Slightly    differing    from  the  suggestions  of    the  Task  Forces,  the  IGC proposes  the  introduction  of  the  following  terms  of  office:

• President: 2 terms  of  4    years     
• Executive  Committee: 2 terms  of  4 years  
• Judicial    bodies: 1 term  of  6    years  
• Chairmen  of  Standing  Committees: 1 term  of  8    years  
• Retroactive  effect:  The  current  terms  of  affected  officials  should  continue;  upon  expiration  of  a second 4-­‐year    term,  only 1  additional  4-­‐year term  can  be added;
• In  addition,  the  Statutes  should  state  the  “staggered  board”  principle  and  should  lay  the foundation  for  an  impeachment  procedure  by  the  Nomination Committee  (to  be  further regulated  on  policy  level)    in  case  an  official  proves to  be  unfit  for    office  during  his/her term  of  office.  

Contrary  to the  Task    Forces,  the  IGC    is  not  proposing  an    age  limit;  the  proposed  terms  of office, the  impeachment  procedure  and  the  integrity  checks  should  serve  the  purpose  of  ensuring efficient corporate  bodies.
8. The  Statutes  should  be  amended  by  the  responsibility  of  the  Audit  &  Compliance  Committee  to establish  and  monitor  a  best  practice    Compliance    Program  and  to    oversee  the  Compliance function.      
During  2012,  the  relating  policies  and  procedures  need  to  be  reviewed  by  the  IGC  before enactment by  the  Executive  Committee.  The  policies  need  to  address  –  inter  alia -- the  following topics  in  a consistent  (i.e.  the  same  rule  for  officials  and  employees)  and  detailed  way:

• Conflicts  of  interest  
• Gifts & hospitality  
• Confidential  reporting  mechanism  
• Responsibilities  and  resources  

9. In  order  to  ensure the integrity of  FIFA’s officials and  key employees  in  line  with  FIFA’s values and  principles, a Nomination Committee  should  be  established.  This  includes  the following primary  steps, which  should  be  implemented  as soon as possible:

• The  Chair  and  the  Deputy  Chair  of  the  Nomination Committee  should  be  independent  in    accordance  with  the  definition  to be  included  in  the  FIFA  Statutes;  in  addition  they    should meet  the  necessary  professional  requirements    applicable  to  all  members of  the  Nomination Committee  as  set  out  in  the  proposed Organization  Regulations;  
• The  initial  candidates  for  those  positions  should  be  selected  and  proposed  by  the  IGC;  
• The  candidates  should  be  elected  by  the  competent  FIFA  body  and  start  their  functions as soon as possible;      
• The  Nomination Committee  should  be  given  the  competences and  resources to  discharge  its  purpose;  it  should  draw  up a  budget  and  decide  on the  support  of  external  advice  at  its  own discretion.  It  shall  also  have  access  to  internal    investigatory  resources  of the  Ethics Committee;  
• The  Nomination Committee  should  have  access  to complaints  and  allegations  filed    under the  confidential  reporting  mechanism  and  should  receive  regular updates    on  information relevant  for  their  remit;  
• The  remit  of  the  Nomination Committee  should  include  the  following:  

1. Search,  selection  and  proposal  of  independent  members  of  Standing    Committees 
2. Checks  relating  to    professional  criteria  on  all  officials  covered    by  such    requirements  
3. Integrity Checks  on key officials  and  employees  of  FIFA  
4. The  cornerstones  of  the  Integrity  Check  should  be  regulated  in the FIFA  Statutes: 
5. Personal  scope: Key  officials,  including President, Executive Committee Members,  Committee  Members  to  be  elected  by  Congress,  Finance Committee Members,  Key    employees  
6. Temporal  scope:  Retroactive  for  all  current  position  holders;  upon   election/re-­‐election    
7. Detailed  regulation  of  content  and  process  of  the  Integrity  Check  should  be established by the Nomination  Committee during  2012 and  a corresponding policy   should  be  adopted. The regulation should  be  reviewed  by  the  IGC  before  adoption;    
8. In  order  to  improve  transparency  and  democracy,  all  open  positions  covered  by  the Nomination  Committee  procedure  should  be  made  public  and    applications  can be submitted to the Nomination Committee. 

Mark Pieth Looks Back

In the New York Times, James Montague quotes Mark Pieth on the FIFA reform effort:

At the FIFA Congress in May, he publicly challenged Blatter and FIFA to release details of the salaries and expenses of top officials.

“I turned around and said, ‘You could stun everyone,’ ” Pieth said. “I was saying: ‘Be bold. Show our critics that.’ ”

Then came the but. “They didn’t take up the challenge; these guys are too stuck in their traditional ways,” he said, adding: “We underestimated that this is a purely self-regulated body. They are a bit like the Vatican. No one can force them to change.”

Montague also says that Pieth resigned from the IGC. I'm not sure this is correct and have tweeted Montague a question. (UPDATE: Looks like Pieth has said he intends to step down by the end of 2013, which may in fact be a moot point, depending upon FIFA's druthers.)

A Proposal to Compensate College Athletes

Below is a proposal to allow college athletes to capitalize on their economic value via the model used under the Bayh-Dole legislation which shared intellectual property rights with faculty who do research in universities using federal funds. It is an argument I've alluded to on this blog before.

My proposal is so compelling that ... I couldn't get it published anywhere, ahem. So here it is!

What the NCAA can learn from Bayh-Dole

College sports are facing a crisis. A group of about two dozen current and former college athletes, led by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon have sued the National Collegiate Athletics Administration. The athletes argue that licensing revenues generated by the NCAA using the images and likenesses of specific players should be shared with those players. In the coming weeks a federal judge will decide whether to certify the case as a class action, which would then bring into the case many thousands of former and current college athletes.

If that were to occur, then the NCAA and universities could be responsible for paying billions of dollars to college athletes. In 2012, the top 5 college athletic conferences collectively received over $1 billion in television revenue for football and the March Madness spring post-season basketball tournament operates under a 14-year, $10.8 billion television agreement. March Madness alone generated more than a billion dollars in TV ad revenue, exceeding that of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. Johnny Manziel, the Texas A&M quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy last year, generated an estimated $37 million in publicity for his university last year.

With the magnitude of the financial stakes, it is only a matter of time before the dam breaks and the notion of the “scholar-athlete” who plays only for school pride and a scholarship becomes a thing of the past. Rather than wait for a court decision, a labor action by high profile athletes or other possible revolutionary changes, the NCAA and universities can get ahead of this issue by paying attention to the lessons of history very close to home.

In 1980 the US Congress passed what the Economist called in 2002 “possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century.” The Bayh-Dole Act changed property rights with respect to the discoveries made in universities as a result of federally funded research. Prior to 1980 the US government retained ownership of the intellectual property associated with discoveries which resulted from federal research and development. Very few of the patents owned by the federal government were being been commercialized, and policy makers sought a way to better capitalize on the billions of dollars in federal R&D taking place at universities.

Under the law, professors and other university researchers who create intellectual property gain a share in its rewards, thereby creating strong incentives both to discover and to commercialize. In the two decades following the passage of Bayh-Dole US universities increased their patents by 1,000% and added an estimated $40 billion annually to the economy. At the same time, the law ensured that technology transfer activities on campus would be closely monitored to ensure that the mission of universities was not compromised.

So what does Bayh-Dole tell us about college athletics? Several years ago, former Senator Birch Bayh explained why the Bayh-Dole Act works: “it aligns the interests of the taxpaying public, the federal government, research universities, their departments, inventors, and private sector developers transforming government supported research into useable products.”

The NCAA and universities should explore aligning the interests of scholarship athletes, university campuses, the NCAA and the sports public with the incredible revenue potential of college sports. Assigning to universities the intellectual property rights of athletes which play under their names while creating a revenue-sharing model with those athletes would meet this need. Just as occuered with respect to the faculty, such an approach would encourage the further generation of revenue from sports, creating a windfall for many college athletic programs, some of which are strapped for cash, and deliver deserved rewards to the scholarship athletes who play the games.

A revenue-sharing model has served college faculty who conduct research and their home universities very well over more than three-decades. Universities should get to work on adopting a similar model for its athletes, before change is forced upon them, perhaps abruptly.

Platini Confirms Political Influence in FIFA Qatar Vote

The Guardian reports:

To some it will be a statement of the obvious, to others an admission that should ring alarm bells. Responding to the assertion of the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, that the Qatar 2022 World Cup was a "political" choice by European voters, the Uefa president, Michel Platini, has confirmed that "political and economic influences" were a factor.

The controversial selection of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup in December 2010 has resulted in a bitter row over whether the tournament should be moved to winter to avoid the searing summer heat, a move expected to be agreed in principle by Fifa next month.

Blatter, who voted for the US to host the 2022 tournament but has since become an advocate of moving it to winter, said in an interview this week that there was "definitely direct political influence" on European executive committee members to vote for Qatar.

"European leaders recommended to its voting members to opt for Qatar, because of major economic interests in the country," he told the German weekly Die Zeit.

Following a meeting of all 54 Uefa member associations in Dubrovnik, at which they confirmed in principle their support for a winter World Cup in 2022, Platini confirmed Blatter's comments. "With the extraordinary influence Mr Blatter has," Platini said, "he has only all of a sudden realised there are political and economic influences when we decide who will host an Olympic Games and so forth? It's better late than never I guess."

Platini sardonically added: "It's new, apparently. It was said that Europeans voted for Qatar but Qatar got 14 votes. We're only eight. If you subtract eight from 14 you get six left over."

The issue of how Qatar got 14 votes has been widely discussed. Here is how one Australian newspaper characterized the vote back in 2010:

UEFA boss Michel Platini reportedly gave his vote to Qatar on the request of his French President Nicolas Sarkozy after France signed a favourable oil deal with the tiny Middle Eastern nation.

When asked why so many of the ExCo had voted for Qatar, Mr [Peter] Hargitay [FIFA insider and consultant to Australia's failed bid] replied "You go figure it out. What do you think motivates people, 14 of them, to vote for a country the population of Zurich, to vote for a country that is the size of Fiji, to vote for a country where the infrastructure to play host to millions of fans still has to be created?"

You can see an overview of the so-called Qatargate issue here.

Fox Sports Reported to Oppose FIFA World Cup Schedule Change

In my paper on holding FIFA accountable (here in PDF) I discussed six different mechanisms of accountability, drawing on the academic literature on governance. One of those was market accountability:

Market accountability refers to influence that is exercised by investors or consumers through market mechanisms.

According to Bloomberg, Fox Sports is not happy with FIFA proposed move of the 2022 World Cup to a winter date:

Fox Sports, which agreed to pay a record fee for U.S. broadcast rights to soccer’s World Cup, told the sport’s governing body it opposes plans to reschedule the 2022 event in Qatar, two people familiar with the matter said.

James Murdoch, the son of 21st Century Fox Inc. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, and other network executives told FIFA that moving the competition by several months from its usual June start to the winter would clash with National Football League games, according to one person familiar with the matter. The people requested anonymity because the talks were private.

FIFA’s executive board is meeting next month to discuss a proposal by the Zurich-based organization’s president,Sepp Blatter, to reschedule the tournament because of the high temperatures in Qatar. Fox in 2011 agreed to pay $425 million for the two-tournament, 2018-22 package, more than four times what current rights holder ESPN paid for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and next year’s tournament in Brazil.

“FIFA has informed us that they are considering and voting on moving the 2022 World Cup,” Fox said in an e-mailed statement. “Fox Sports bought the World Cup rights with the understanding they would be in the summer as they have been since the 1930s.”

Sponsors and others with a financial stake in FIFA have not in the past shown too much concern about FIFA governance. The 2022 Qatar World Cup decision is different in that it has a clear relationship to television revenues, and Fox is heavily invested in making money off of the tournament.

In football governance, as elsewhere, money talks. Fox Sports has the potential for significant influence on FIFA upcoming decision making. Stay tuned.

The Business of the NFL

The Proposed Reforms from Mark Pieth's 2011 Report Unimplemented by FIFA

Below you can find the recommendations made by Mark Pieth in 2011 in his report Governing FIFA which I have identified as having not been adopted by FIFA in its reform process. These recommendations comprise part of the reform evaluation which I recent discussed at Play the Game back in June and to which FIFA responded to here.

After preparing the report for FIFA, Professor Pieth got into a bit of hot water when he was subsequently appointed to chair the FIFA Independent Governance Committee and it was learned that his institute had accepted from FIFA an undisclosed $128,000 plus a $5,000 daily fee to prepare the report.

Overall, I identified 15 statements in the form of recommendations in the 2011 Pieth report. Of those 15, FIFA failed to even partially implement 13. Those 13 are listed below, to aid in discussion and (ideally) debate. Questions worth thinking about include: Which ones are most important? Which ones are secondary? Which may be off the mark? Comments welcomed either here or via email.

I've blogged on the unimplemented recommendations from the Transparency International report Safe Hands: Building Transparency and Integrity at FIFA and shortly I will also list those recommendations unimplemented found in the first report of the FIFA IGC.

• FIFA could further upgrade its existing financial governance, in particular by: developing a catalogue of potentially critical payments, and by deciding whether direct controls are warranted or whether indirect controls could be sufficient; 
• . . . intensifying its specific anti-corruption controls within existing COSO. 
• FIFA should upgrade its compliance system to meet the requirements of a state of the art corporate anti-corruption compliance programme (including a review of the Code of Ethics, the risk analysis, the detailed rules on contributions etc. and the hiring of third parties, education and training as well as notification channels). Particular emphasis needs to be placed on the credible implementation of the programme. Member Associations and Confederations should be encouraged to adopt comparable standards. 
• On an organisational level, FIFA should consider electing independent members into the ExCo. 
• A Compensation and Benefits Committee should decide over benefits of officials of FIFA bodies and senior staff. 
• Candidates should announce their wish to stand sufficiently ahead of the election. 
• FIFA should examine a system of campaign financing which provides officially announced candidates with sufficient backing (a certain number of Member Associations) with FIFA funding, ruling out further private campaign contributions. 
• FIFA should consider limiting terms of office of its officials. 
• FIFA should consider introducing regular due diligence checks by the Ethics Committee on elected Members of its bodies. A regulation should specify cases of incompatibility with the FIFA function. The regulation should also define the procedure, and clarify under which circumstances an official would be temporarily suspended from his function. 
• Decisions on hosting and on commercialising would greatly benefit, beyond a review of the actual procedures, of an overall abstract strategy, defined by relevant Committees and ratified by Congress. 
• An institution of the size and significance of FIFA needs a state of the art conflict of interest regulation, indicating cases of conflict and specifying the procedures (up to a possible recusal). While a conflict of interest regulation is a general requirement, it will be particularly useful to prevent abuses and adverse publicity in FIFA’s relations to Members. 
• Additional preventive measures ensuring transparency and accountability in its relations with Members should be taken in the area of financial contributions for the development of football in countries and regions
• Members should be taken in the area of financial contributions for the development of football in countries and regions. An overall strategy should be adopted for the multitude of historically grown funds. They should be governed in a comparable manner, and expenditure as well as uses audited on the standard of the Goal Programme and FAP.

What The Sports Gene Gets Wrong

As readers here know, I really like The Sports Gene by David Epstein, formerly of Sports Illustrated and now at Pro Publica. The book overall is excellent and has already motivated several posts -- here and here. In this post I pick a nit with respect to the book's treatment of testosterone and athletic performance with respect to determining who is judged eligible to compete in women's athletics, a complicated issue that deserved to be treated more comprehensively.

Back in spring 2012, students in my graduate seminar on Science and Society were tasked with coming up with a policy for determining who would be allowed to participate in the women's events in the then-upcoming 2012 Olympics in London. The case that we were looking closely at was of course that of Caster Semenya of South Africa, a female athlete whose treatment by the sporting community was embarrassing and undignified.

At that time the International Olympics Committee adopted a policy (following the lead of the International Association of Athletics Federations or IAAF) which used testosterone levels in and usage by the body as the criterion for determining eligibility for participating in women's events.The policy called for a panel of experts to make judgments in contested cases on the following (the policy is here in PDF):

The Expert Panel shall examine all available information and establish (i) whether the investigated athlete’s androgen level, measured by reference to testosterone  levels in serum, is within the male range, and if so, (ii) whether such hyperandrogenism is functional or not.

The Sports Gene notes this policy as well as a similar policy adopted by the NCAA and notes that "testosterone has been deemed the source of the male athletic advantage." Epstein observes that testosterone may not be all there is to the advantage, as women who are unable to process testosterone -- call androgen insensitive -- are actually over-represented in sports, "vastly" so according to Epstein.

It is here where I pick my nit. Unlike the in depth and nuanced exploration of reasons behind Jamaican sprinting success found in The Sports Gene, the role of testosterone in female athletic success -- which is just as complex, contested and nuanced is given short shrift.

Epstien sums up the science on this issue as follows:

No scientist can claim to know the precise impact of testosterone on any individual athlete. But a 2012 study that spent three months following female athletes from a range of sports--including track and field and swimming--showed that the elite-level competitors had testosterone levels that consistently remained more than twice as high as those of nonelites. And there are powerful anecdotes as well.

Fair enough, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough.

In a critique of the IAAF and IOC policies published in 2012, Karkazis and colleagues (here in PDF) made a case against using testosterone as a criterion for determining eligibility for participating in women's sports events:

The new policies rest on the notion that the difference in athletic performance between males and females is “predominantly due to higher levels of androgenic hormones in males resulting in increased strength and muscle development” (IAAF 2011c, 1). Both policies rely in particular on testosterone levels as the mark of unfair advantage. Although it may be surprising, given that this is a popular belief and is stated as fact in both IAAF and IOC statements (IAAF 2011d; IOC 2011), the link between athleticism and androgens in general or testosterone in particular has not been proven. Despite the many assumptions about the relationship between testosterone and athletic advantage, there is no evidence showing that successful athletes have higher testosterone levels than less successful athletes.

Say what?

In sum, there is a great deal of mythology about the physical effects of testosterone and other androgens (Fausto-Sterling 1985; Jordan-Young 2010). Likewise, mental effects of androgens are often implied to give an additional boost to athletes, but placebo-controlled studies of testosterone show that increasing testosterone (above minimum functional levels) has no effects on mood, cognitive performance, libido, or aggression (Bhasin et al. 1996; Bhasin et al. 2001; Kvorning et al. 2006). Optimal levels of testosterone is one of many factors that is necessary for athletes to achieve their own “personal best,” but comparing testosterone levels across individuals is not of any apparent scientific value.

Karkazis et al. may indeed be on to something that the role of endogenous testosterone is vastly overstated. Perhaps instead the suggestive research by Christopher J. Cook and colleagues (replied on by Epstein) could be more correct in identifying endogenous testosterone as a key determinant of elite female athletic success. Clearly there are uncertainties and disagreements in the basic scientific understandings. As The Sports Gene well explains, such complexities are much the norm with respect to human athletic achievement.

Science issues aside, the IAAF and IOC policies may indeed represent a pragmatic compromise that is both legitimate and fair. Certainly the Karkazis et al. recommendation to used national legal definitions of what it means to be female is pragmatically untenable. Karkazis et al. do make a compelling case that the expert advisory process which developed the guidelines fell short in important respects, including its composition, procedures and scope.

As with the case of Jamaican sprinting success and east African long-distance success, the issue of sex differences and advantage in athletic competition is complicated -- more complicated than its treatment in The Sports Gene. Of course, this is but one nit in what is overall an excellent book, and one that will be required reading in my upcoming spring 2014 course.

Flaws in a Case for Doping

Malcolm Gladwell has made an argument for doping in sport. Riffing (again) off of David Epstien's The Sports Gene, Gladwell argues that doping in sport actually serves to level the playing field, by helping people to overcome natural limitations. This post explains why Gladwell's argument falls apart.

At The New Yorker Gladwell writes:

The ability to consistently hit a baseball thrown at speeds approaching a hundred miles an hour, with a baffling array of spins and curves, requires the kind of eyesight commonly found in only a tiny fraction of the general population.

Eyesight can be improved—in some cases dramatically—through laser surgery or implantable lenses. Should a promising young baseball player cursed with normal vision be allowed to get that kind of corrective surgery? In this instance, Major League Baseball says yes. Major League Baseball also permits pitchers to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of their throwing arm with a tendon taken from a cadaver or elsewhere in the athlete’s body. Tendon-replacement surgery is similar to laser surgery: it turns the athlete into an improved version of his natural self.

But when it comes to drugs Major League Baseball—like most sports—draws the line. An athlete cannot use a drug to become an improved version of his natural self, even if the drug is used in doses that are not harmful, and is something that—like testosterone—is no more than a copy of a naturally occurring hormone, available by prescription to anyone, virtually anywhere in the world.

The underlying logic here is as follows:

It is a vision of sports in which the object of competition is to use science, intelligence, and sheer will to conquer natural difference... this kind of achievement [may simply be] worthier than the gold medals of a man with the dumb luck to be born with a random genetic mutation.

In the real world, the use of science, intelligence, and sheer will to conquer natural difference is commonplace in sports. Think of Lionel Messi's hormone-aided growth treatments as a youth in the Barcelona youth academy. Think of Oscar Pistorius and his blades. Think of Tiger Woods and his lasered eyes and surgically repaired knees.

Performance enhancement through science, technology and expertise is fundamental to sport. But so too is the drawing of lines. Human growth hormone for a kid with growth hormone disorder is deemed acceptable but human growth hormone for a professional cyclist is not. Such decisions reflect both broad social values and the values of the sports community. They are of course arbitrary in important respects, and thus routinely contested, constantly re-negotiated and often, inconsistently applied across specific contexts. Sport governance is of course like governance more generally.

Gladwell apparently does not like the drawing of lines in the context of doping. However, lines must be drawn. I could certainly enhance my performance in the 10,000m by riding a bicycle, but that would against the rules. Doping rules are an extension of the rules which govern competition, and have been developed at the constitutive level. 

Gladwell's general approach to doping only makes sense if anything goes -- once you accept that lines must be drawn between what is acceptable performance enhancement and what is not, then the debate becomes one over where that line should be drawn, and that is how things presently work. The case for drawing lines in a different place is often made, but it is not the argument made by Gladwell.

A less charitable interpretation of Gladwell's call for doping to level the playing field is that he is still smarting from Epstein's solid critique of the 10,000-hour path to expertise popularized by Gladwell in his book Outliers. Perhaps Gladwell is now admitting that exceptional talent does exist, but that it should be neutered so that what really matters is effort, and the 10,000 hours. 

Either way, Gladwell's case for doping falls apart. Sports are governed by rules, and rules governing performance enhancement are necessary and important.

FINANCIAL DEPRESSION CONFESSION: Why My Money Woes Were The End of The World!

Have you (or someone you know) ever thought that your money or credit woes were the end of the world? I have.

 

Many of my private clients dealing with money or credit woes were also dealing with major depression as a result of their financial situation. Whether their challenging financial situation was due to a job loss, excessive debt, unexpected financial expense, or lack of money management skills and knowledge; the emotional stress caused significant mental and physical illnesses like high blood pressure, anxiety attacks, etc. 

I can absolutely relate. So, I am sharing my Financial Depression Confession of how my money woes made me feel like it was the end of the world and what I did to help myself get better. My hope is that my transparency with this experience will help someone get through their extremely sensitive and painful period of financial depression. 
  

IT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD!
  
I dealt with major depression. I didn’t want to get out of bed, wasn’t motivated to clean my house, didn’t want to talk or see anyone, and I cried … A LOT! I suffered from insomnia and exhaustion. I over ate and didn’t exercise, so of course I gained lots of weight, which killed my self-esteem. This vicious cycle made me feel like it was the end of the world! I even contemplated suicide, but honestly … I couldn’t even “financially” afford to kill myself. Wait! Before you judge … depression is a severe psychological illness and if not treated, it can cause the sanest person to consider or do insane things.

  
WHAT I DID: I got help! I went to clinical counselor to talk about my feelings. I know what you maybe thinking, but talking out some major emotional insecurities and feelings with a qualified third party helped me to deal with those emotions. It also gave me an unbiased support system. I was reminded that my emotions were normal, which helped me to realize that what I was going through was NOT the end of the world. By purging my private pain, I was able to free my mind to think more logically.

  
NO ONE UNDERSTANDS!

  
I didn't believe that anyone would understand what I was going through. I’m Madam Money! How could anyone understand how or why I was dealing with Money Woes? I didn't think that anyone would understand, so I isolated myself. It was a very lonely place to not have anyone I could trust to share that I was dealing with my deepest and darkest fears of about money.
  
WHAT I DID: Once I realized that this "lie" I was telling myself was bred from my PRIDE. I was too proud to ask for help. So, I had to humble myself and ask my a core circle of family and friends for help. I established specific roles for each of them to help me. For example, I had friends that helped me and held me accountable for eating better and exercising, friends that made me get out of the house to avoid isolation, and a family member that helped me financially when I absolutely needed. Asking for help was the hardest thing for me to do, but it was the best thing I could have ever done. And guess what, they understood because they experienced what I was going through.

I WAS EMOTIONALLY PARALYZED

  
Emotionally and mentally, I was paralyzed. I just couldn't move past what I was going through. Yes, I prayed and did my best to trust that God would get me through it, but I just couldn't do what was necessary to allow God to move. “Faith without Works is dead!” I knew that Bible verse and said it to myself every day. But … I felt helpless and hopeless which kept me paralyzed.
  
WHAT I DID: I changed my MIND! I realized that the eyes may be the strongest muscles in the body, but the Mind (brain) is the hardest muscle to change. So, I worked at it everyday. I changed what I watched, read and listened to. I became extremely protective about what I allowed to enter my mind because Thoughts turn into Words, Words turn into more Thoughts and those Thoughts turn into Actions or Non-Actions. What we visualize will actualize (positive or negative) so I only allowed positive and actionable thoughts, through affirmations, songs, books, etc.

  
OPERATION: FINANCIAL SELF-SABOTAGE

  
I medicated my pain through spending money on eating out every day, drinking and shopping. Oh yes I did! Dealing with the pain was too painful. So I tried to numb the pain by doing the opposite of was I know to do. Knowing what to do and how to do it but doing the opposite is “self-sabotage.” I become my own worst enemy. I became my most challenging client.

WHAT I DID: I got help from another financial coach. Yup! Coaches need coaching too. Even though I didn’t need my coach to tell me what to do; I needed my coach to hold me accountable to do what I know I’m supposed to do. My coach guided me through the process as a support system to stop my financial hemorrhaging caused by my financial self-sabotage. 

  
SELF DOUBT DESTROYED ME!

Everything I did to try to improve my situation, just didn't work. The more my attempts failed the more I doubted myself and my ability to fix my situation. How do you destroy the most confident person in the world … DOUBT! Doubt is the direct result of Fear, which is “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Bottom line … I was afraid to fail and because my attempts weren't working, this failure made me doubt everything.

  
WHAT I DID: Believe it or not … I connected with others! By connecting and networking with other people and professionals, I had intellectually stimulating conversations. Those conversations helped me build new relationships and networks. Those new relationships and networks valued my connection because of my personality, expertise or passion. This built up my confidence. Not only that, I connected with people who experienced my challenges, or knew someone who could assist me with my some of my challenges. This built up my confidence and reduced my doubt. 

 I’m not saying that everything that I did to help me will help you. But I am saying that there is HOPE and HELP for anything that you may be going through. 
  
Whatever you are going through, even though it may feel like it … it is NOT the end of the world.  It is the beginning of a new opportunity to make you stronger than ever to improve your current financial situation. 

  
I look forward to being a resource to help you through my pain, passion and purpose.

Making Money Matters Manageable,

Tarra Jackson

Madam Money's Q & A: Will Rent Reference Help Mortgage Application

Have you (or someone you know) ever wondered if a reference letter from a landlord would help with showing payment history for a mortgage application? 

Great Question!  Here the answer ... 



Do you have a personal finance or credit questions?  

Ask me and get answers! 

Just email your question to Tarra@TarraJackson.com. 

Making Money Matters Manageable, 

Tarra Jackson

Madam Money's Q & A: Is Race Considered in the Credit Score?

Have you (or someone you know) ever wondered if a person's race for financial situation affects or is considered in the calculation of their Credit Score?

Great Question!  Here the answer ...

Do you have a personal finance or credit questions?  Ask me and get answers!

Just email your question to Tarra@TarraJackson.com.

Making Money Matters Manageable,

Tarra Jackson

Who Are the Best Athletes in the NFL?

This is another post motivated by David Epstein's excellent new book, The Sports Gene. This post summarizes a recent study of athletic performance of players in the NFL draft. There are countless ways to measure what it meas to be a "good athlete" and this post looks at a study which used data that NFL teams seem to thing is useful to have to evaluate players in the NFL draft.

Deep in the book Epstein refers in a footnote to a 2011 paper which evaluated football players in the NFL draft according to 9 different tasks (3 are part of the 36.6-m sprint, and 2 are not listed here, bench press, as it is not applied to all players):

• 36.6-m Sprint. The 36.6-m sprint is a test of acceleration and maximum speed. From a 3-point stance, a player runs 36.6 m as fast as he can. Split times are also recorded at 9.1 and 18.3 m. Thus, the 36.6-m sprint test provides 3 separate outcome measures. The 9.1- and 18.3-m split times are measures of acceleration, whereas 36.6-m sprint time is a measure of maximal, or near--maximal, speed. It has previously been suggested that near-maximal speed is achieved by 18.4 m in college American football players (4). Thus, the first 18.3 m of the 36.6-m sprint can be viewed as an acceleration phase, whereas the second half can be viewed as a maximal speed phase.
• Vertical Jump. The vertical jump is a measure of vertical jump ability. Jump height is measured using a device (e.g., Vertec) whereby players jump for maximal height from a standing 2-footed position in a countermovement manner with arm swing. At the peak of the jump, the player reaches as high as possible with a single hand to move horizontal vanes of the Vertec. Vertical jump height is calculated by subtracting the player’s standing-reach height from the height of the highest vane moved.
• Standing Broad Jump. The standing broad jump is a test of horizontal jump ability. Horizontal jump distance is measured. From a standing 2-footed position, with countermovement and arm swing, the player jumps forward for maximal distance. Jump distance is measured as the distance from the start line to the nearest body part landing point (this is typically the point of heel contact).
• 18.3-m Shuttle. The 18.3-m shuttle is a test of change of- direction ability (1). From the starting position, a player runs 4.6 m in 1 direction, quickly changes direction and runs 9.1 m in the opposite direction, and then changes direction again and runs a final 4.6 m in the opposite direction (i.e., the direction in which he initially ran). The test is run in both directions (i.e., left and right) for maximal speed, and the average of the 2 tests is recorded as the score.
• Three-Cone Drill. The player runs around 3 cones placed in the shape of an ‘‘L,’’ with 4.6 m between each cone. From a 3-point stance, the player runs a predetermined route as quickly as possible. This test is also a measure of change of- direction ability (7).

The paper presented data for 14 difference NFL positions. I ranked each position using a points scheme, with 14 points going to the best performing position and 1 to the worst. I then summed the points across the 7 tasks to arrive at an overall score.

Here are the results:

	Total Points	Average points per task	Overall ranking
Corner Back	96	13.7	1.3
Wide receiver	86	12.3	2.7
Free Safety	79	11.3	3.7
Strong safety	79	11.3	3.7
Running Back	71	10.1	4.9
Outside Linebacker	64	9.1	5.9
Inside Linebacker	50	7.1	7.9
Tight end	45	6.4	8.6
Fullback	40	5.7	9.3
Defensive End	36	5.1	9.9
Quarterback	35	5.0	10.0
Defensive Tackle	20	2.9	12.1
Offensive Tackle	15	2.1	12.9
Offensive Guard	7	1.0	14.0

Corner backs are the best athletes, offensive linemen are the worst. To my surprise, quarterbacks rank just above the linemen, and are among the worst athletes. Enjoy!

Time to Rethink the Goldman Dilemma?

The so-called "Goladman Dilemma" is one of the most frequently cited statistics in discussions of doping in sports. It holds that world class athletes are not like you and me because many more of them would be willing to engage in prohibited or illegal doping even it it meant a certain, early death in exchange for sporting success. Recent research however suggests that the Goldman Dilemma is no longer an appropriate characterization of the view of elite athletes (if it ever was).

The Goldman Dilemma was characterized as follows in the New York Times in 2010:

There’s a well-known survey in sports, known as the Goldman Dilemma. For it, a researcher, Bob Goldman, began asking elite athletes in the 1980s whether they would take a drug that guaranteed them a gold medal but would also kill them within five years. More than half of the athletes said yes. When he repeated the survey biannually for the next decade, the results were always the same. About half of the athletes were quite ready to take the bargain.

The original source oh the dilemma is apparently a 1984 book, by Bob Goldman and colleagues, titled Death in the Locker Room.

A new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine by James COnnon, Jules Woolf and Jason Mazanov has tried to replicate Goldman's findings with a rigorous survey of elite North American track and field athletes. They were motivated to do the study because, "there has been little in the way of replication of the Goldman dilemma since 1995."

Titled "Would they dope? Revisiting the Goldman dilemma" the study finds results at odds with that of the Goldman dilemma:

Only 2 out of 212 samples (119 men, 93 women, mean age 20.89) reported that they would take the Faustian bargain offered by the original Goldman dilemma. However, if there were no consequences to the (illegal) drug use, then 25/212 indicated that they would take the substance (no death condition). Legality also changes the acceptance rate to 13/212 even with death as a consequence. Regression modelling showed that no other variable was significant (gender, competitive level, type of sport) and there was no statistical difference between the interview and online collection method.

Goldman’s results do not match our sample. A subset of athletes is willing to dope and another subset is willing to sacrifice their life to achieve success, although to a much lesser degree than that observed by Goldman.

The results suggests that elites athletes are perhaps more like you and me than suggested by the Goldman dilemma. However, even with 1-2% of elite athletes willing to accept Goldman's Faustian bargain, it still helps to explain why doping is pervasive.

The 10,000-hour rule: Epstein vs. Gladwell

David Epstein and Malcom Gladwell are having a bit of a debate. In his new (and excellent) book The Sports Gene, Epstein takes strong issue with the idea that 10,000 hours of practice is a useful rule of thumb for how much practice it takes for someone to be world class.

The "10,000-hour rule" was popularized by the writer Malcolm Gladwell in a chapter with that title in his 2008 book Outliers. In it Gladwell quotes approvingly neurologist Daniel Levitin (p. 40):

[T]en thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert -- in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals ... no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time.

For his part Epstein agrees that practice helps perfect, but finds the evidence to be far more nuanced and complex, arguing that "drastically different amounts of practice ... will be required for similar outcomes." Epstein adds, "somehow, the 7,000-to-40,000-hours rule just doesn't have the same ring to it" (p. 23).

Epstein explains further in an interview with Outside magazine:

Outside: The popular narrative you found while researching the book was the 10,000-hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Was the idea that pervasive?

Epstein: Totally. And it motivated me to do the book, actually, and this was before I even knew how I felt about the so-called rule. . . people would call it “Gladwell’s 10,000 hours” as if he had done the research for it. It started to bug me. People were using it just to mean that practice was important, that’s it. That’s not what the theory says. The researcher behind it, Anders Ericsson, has said that he thinks all people have the necessary genes to be elite performers. Just saying that practice is important is totally uncontroversial. From a scientific standpoint it’s useless. Scientists have to say how important it is, what else is important? I found it to be troubling from a scientific standpoint and the more I evaluated it, the more it seemed to unravel. And ultimately, Ericsson read Outliers and said Gladwell misconstrued his work. His words, not mine.

Outside: How did Gladwell misconstrue it?

Aside from not having copied the numbers from the actual paper correctly for his book? He says that there is a perfect correspondence between practice and the level of expertise a person attains. And you can’t tell that from the paper. The 10,000 hours is an average of differences. You could have two people in any endeavor and one person took 0 hours and another took 20,000 hours, which is something like what happened with two high jumpers I discuss in the book. One guy put in 20,000 and one put in 0, so there’s your average of 10,000 hours, but that tells you nothing about an individual.

Now, Gladwell doesn’t say there’s no such thing as genetic talent. I think other writers are stricter than him. [Matthew Syed’s] Bounce is a book that minimizes talent. Gladwell does say elite performers are more talented. One of the things that Ericsson criticizes Gladwell about is to say that 10,000 hours is some kind of rule. The paper just says that these performers by the age of 20, these performers have accumulated 10,000 hours but there’s no where that says it’s a magical number where that’s when they become elite or anything like that.

Today, Gladwell responds to Epstein's critiques at The New Yorker, asking, "I wonder if, in his zeal to stake out a provocative claim on this one matter, [Epstein] has built himself a straw man."

Gladwell defends the "10,000-hour rule":

[Epstein] cites a study by Guillermo Campitelli and Fernand Gobet of a hundred and four competitive chess players. Epstein says that they found that the average time it took to reach “master” status was eleven thousand hours—but that one player reached that level in just three thousand hours. This is variation on an extreme scale. Does that mean that in chess “naturals” really do exist? I’m not so sure. Epstein is talking about chess masters—the lowest of the four categories of recognized chess experts. (It’s Division II chess.) Grandmasters—the highest level—are a different story. Robert Howard, of the University of New South Wales, recently published a paper in which he surveyed a group of eight grandmasters and found that the group hit their highest ranking after fourteen thousand hours of practice. Even among prodigies who reached grandmaster level before the age of sixteen, we see the same pattern. Almost all of that group reached grandmaster level at fourteen or fifteen, and most started playing when they were four or five. The famous Polgár sisters (two of whom reached grandmaster status) put in somewhere north of fifty thousand hours of practice to reach the top. Epstein, similarly, argues that studies show that it takes only four thousand hours to reach “international levels” in basketball. The study in question was of a sample of players from the Australian men’s basketball team. I have nothing against either Australia or Australian basketball. But I’d be a bit more impressed if someone could find a starting point guard in the N.B.A. with fewer than ten years of basketball under his belt.

Gladwell might be interested in Steve Nash, long-time NBA veteran and wannabe soccer player. Nash started playing basketball in 1988 while in 8th grade. Less than 9 years later Nash started an NBA game at point guard for the Phoenix Suns. Would this case impress Gladwell?

The case of Steve Nash, and other NBA basketball stars with more or less experience simply reinforces Epstein's argument -- the answer to the question of whether talent or practice matters more is always: it depends. It depends on the task and on the individual. Sometimes the combination of task and individual means that less practice is needed to achieve world class expertise, some times more, and sometimes there is simply no combination that leads to world class expertise (e.g., me and long-distance running!).

One thing that we can say for sure from this debate -- There is no "10,000-hour rule." It is an oversimplification of a much more complex set of ideas. The Sports Gene helps to put it in its proper place.

Jamaica's Doping Hurricane

At Sports Illustrated Renee Anne Shirely, the head of Jamaica's Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO, somewhat equivalent to USADA) from June, 2012 to February, 2013, has written a powerful indictment of Jamaican athletics and its approach to doping.

She writes:

JADCO was formally established only in 2008, and the program has had a difficult childhood. In 2010, after WADA head David Howman pointed out that JADCO had board members who also lead sports associations on the island, the entire 15-member JADCO board of directors was dissolved. One of the dismissed board members, Dr. Herbert Elliott, was Jamaica's team doctor at the Beijing Olympics, and is now chairman of JADCO.

In July, Elliott was vague when asked about the number of out-of-competition tests conducted by JADCO in 2013. "I don't want our athletes to know whether it's 400 or 500 or whatever," he told The Guardian. But Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller recently told Parliament that—in total since 2009—there have been 356 out-of-competition tests conducted in Jamaica.

The current program—while improved—makes a mockery of Jamaica's posturing and flames suspicion more than it douses it. Between the time Between the time the current board was appointed, in February 2012, and the start of the London Olympics late last July, out-of-date testing kits and limited staffing resources resulted in a total of one out-of-competition test. Below are the full 2012 testing numbers by month—with not one out-of-competition test in the three months leading into the Games . . .

Shirley explains some of the challenges that she faced, leading to her stepping down:

When I took over, in mid-July, JADCO did not have a large enough staff in place to carry out rigorous anti-doping programs. The Doping Control/Technical Services and the Education/Communications Units had only one junior staff member each, and the director positions were vacant. There was no Whereabouts Information Officer—in charge of keeping track of athletes so that they could be tested out of competition—and only one full-time doping control officer. The committee in charge of reviewing the legitimacy of medical prescriptions for athletes was without a chairman and had never met.

Other aspects of the program were equally troubled—and troubling. I arrived to find no accounting staff in place, and no monthly financial statements had been produced in the five years since inception. JADCO was behind on payments for a number of its bills. . .

During my time with JADCO, I also voiced concern about internet purchases of drugs and supplements by athletes, as there is reason to believe that some Jamaican athletes have been careless in their Internet purchases of dietary supplements, the ingredients labels of which are not tightly regulated in Jamaica. But despite my efforts I could not get any member of the JADCO board or member of Jamaica's Cabinet to take it seriously. They believe that Jamaica does not have a problem.

The more frustrated I became about the lack of staff and attention to issues I raised, the worse the working environment became for me, and in February of this year I met with a group of JADCO board members and we agreed it would be best if I stepped aside. Dr. Elliott has voiced his strong opinion that Jamaican anti-doping efforts are satisfactory. But this is not a time for grandstanding. In the wake of both recent achievements on the track and devastating positive tests off it, we need to believe that our athletes are clean and that our anti-doping program is independent, vigorous, and free from any semblance of conflicts of interest.

She recommends that the Jamaican government step in to provide greater oversight of JADCO. The JADCO sits under the Jamaican Prime Minister's Office and is thus a government entity, which differentiates it from USADA, which is in a quasi-governmental role.

A editorial in The Gleaner, a Jamaican newspaper, last week highlighted what is at stake in the poor governance of JADCO:

[C]are has to be taken that nothing is done to weaken Jamaica's athletics brand. That is why we are concerned by the seeming managerial governance dysfunction at the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO).

For a long time, external critics questioned the robustness of JADCO's drug-testing programme. This newspaper lamented its lack of transparency.

Eventually, JADCO's chairman, Dr Herb Elliott, lifting the veil slightly, caused it to dribble out that JADCO conducted 106 tests last year. But the agency's former executive director has since revealed that that figure is 50 per cent shy of the real mark and hints at bungling and incompetence at the level of the governors.

JADCO has offered no response of clarity, nor has it shared a strategic programme. Those are old ways that hurt Jamaica.