
Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/sports/alabama-tracking-app.html
======
partialrecall
It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to
have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself
has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many
students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that
many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where
students are leaving the game early, it's perhaps not an activity that
students enjoy after all.

Why can't the American football industry run itself more like the American
baseball industry? Instead of leeching off universities, particularly public
universities, they could be operating minor leagues independent of any
educational system.

(Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profitable
for universities and provides funding for academics, but that is only true in
a very small number of schools, so I don't think that's a valid argument. It
may well be the case in Alabama, but I still don't think it relevant since I
take issue with the scheme as a whole, not merely on a case by case basis.)

~~~
impendia
> Why can't the American football industry run itself more like the American
> baseball industry?

I am a very strong opponent of the overwhelming sports culture at American
universities, and of the absurd sums of money spent to sustain it. (Example:
Dabo Swinney was just given a $93 million contract to remain the football
coach of Clemson.)

This

>Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profitable
for universities and provides funding for academics

is part of the reason. But the real argument is: successful football programs
generate positive publicity for the school; they encourage more strong high
school students to apply for admission; they encourage alumni to open their
pocketbooks and donate.

Personally, as a professor at an American university, I don't buy it. But
evidently my bosses do.

~~~
qws
Is it really still profitable in e.g. that case of Dabo Swinney landing a 93
million dollar contract?

~~~
pitt1980
The places where the profitability of football is in question is basically
everything lower than the 5 main conferences (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big XII, and
Pac 10), and especially the schools lower than that level which aren't
reliable winners. (Think the San Jose State's of the world)

Clemson football generated 50 million dollars last year

[https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemso...](https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemson/2019/07/20/staying-
power-clemson-football-revenue-million/1736799001/)

While 93 million over 10 years works out to being a pretty sizable chunk of
that for one employee,

yeah, its still a profitable enterprise

~~~
sverige
It's profitable only because the players aren't paid. Only a small percentage
of the players make it to the NFL. Many of the remainder suffer physical
consequences for the rest of their lives. It's one of the most obscene
exploitation schemes still remaining.

~~~
_edo
> It's profitable only because the players aren't paid.

No.

The NFL minimum salary is under $500k and by your own admission these players
aren't that good.

Even a generous $200k/yr and a generous 100 player roster only adds up to $20
million, and there are teams with over $50 million in profits.

~~~
sverige
First, there are not many teams with over $50 million in profits, only the top
13 as of 2018. [0]

Second, you're assuming that even the top players would only make the minimum,
which you have arbitrarily set at $200k, assuming that they would be paid less
than the minimum NFL salary. The more accurate measure would be to pay them
some percentage of the _average_ NFL salary, which was $1.9 million in 2018.
[1] So assuming the average college player salary would be 40% (to use your
arbitrary number), that would be just under $800k per player. Even with a
53-player roster, that puts player salaries at over $40 million annually,
which wipes out profits for all but the top 15 or 20 teams.

Third, I didn't say these players "aren't that good." The fact that only 2% of
them make it to the NFL doesn't mean the other 98% aren't that good, it just
means that the market won't bear paying for more players when they're fairly
compensated.

[0]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2018/09/11/college-f...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2018/09/11/college-
footballs-most-valuable-teams/)

[1] [https://gazettereview.com/2017/03/average-nfl-player-
salary/](https://gazettereview.com/2017/03/average-nfl-player-salary/)

~~~
_edo
The average college football player, with their 2% chance of making it to the
NFL, is worth the median NFL salary of roughly $800k? This has gone a little
too far off track for me.

The core issue here is claiming that profits are derived from not paying
players. There are plenty of teams not paying players and losing money. The
top teams could pay players well and still make profit. There's a small
Goldilocks zone where what players should be paid lines up with the team's
level of profit. The old "profits come from not paying workers" canard is a
story with little to no explanatory power here.

------
tlrobinson
Alternative less-clickbaity headline: Alabama incentivizes students to stay at
games by offering improved chances of getting playoff tickets.

When I first read the headline my mind naturally jumped to the most extreme
interpretation: Alabama was using some sort of involuntary tracking technology
to lower students' GPAs if they don't attend football games. Obviously very
far-fetched, but knowing how much Alabama loves their football, not
_completely_ implausible.

~~~
klenwell
The current NY Times headline (did it change?) doesn't mention penalties but
emphasizes the creepy tracking part:

 _Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games_

But for that gross invasion of privacy, I'd say this was a pretty clever
solution.

~~~
Jach
It's not an invasion when you invite it.

~~~
RandomBacon
Nothing ever optional became mandatory.

~~~
diminoten
Many optional things never become mandatory, stop the slippery slope
fallacy...

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hnburnsy
Maybe the headline changed but the app is not penalizing students for leaving
early but possibly rewarding them for staying. Crazy how headlines drive a
narrative that often times does not match the reported facts.

From an AP article on this...

"if they stay in the stands at a home game at Bryant-Denny Stadium through the
fourth quarter, students who have the app could be rewarded with highly
coveted postseason tickets to events like the SEC Championship Game or the
College Football Playoffs"

~~~
Clubber
It's also opt-in. Sounds like fear mongering with clickbait. I don't see a
problem with tracking I know about and can turn off at will. It's the tracking
I don't know about and can't do anything about that's the issue.

"Students who download the Tide Loyalty Points app will be tracked only inside
the stadium, he said, and they can close the app — or delete it — once they
leave the stadium."

Jesus, I just realized it was the New York Times ...

------
grogenaut
The university I went to is in the top 20 (top 8 when I went)(this is just for
context not to start an argument about rankings). The school is also in the
top 20 in endowments.

When I was there they did an analysis of alumni donations. One thing they
found out was that if you did 2 or more activities in high school you were
likely to do 1 or more activities in college. (these numbers are ballpark) If
did ANY activities in college you were around 60% more likely to donate to the
school. If you did NO activities and just took class you were only 20% likely
to donate. If you did MORE activities you were even more likely to donate. The
amount of your donation was related heavily to your income and found to be an
independent function from your activities.

Thus the school decided that recruiting multi-sport atheletes to play Division
3 sports (which we were) was revenue positive for running an athletic
department. Their goal was to provide a positive feeling at all the sports so
that everyone felt good about their experience. So the school got very into
(even to the chancellor level) attempting to be on par with stanford's numbers
in the Sears Trophy (now the ncaa directors cup) for most National
Championships in a year. Which means you have to be good at pretty much
everything, golf (m&w), tennis (m&w), swimming (m&w), volleyball (w),
football, basketball (m&w), etc. And that's what they did.

I'm not saying this is the only reason they did what they did, they were very
genuine about providing great experiences for the student athletes as they
should if they're doing their jobs.

Anyway the overall point is that some schools also focus on alumni donations
which ARE driven by school loalty, which are driven by sports. One _could_
consider people buying school athletic merch as a form of alumni donation.

I'm not explaining or excusing why college sports it the big business it is in
D1 as it is. I've got problems with that as well, but mainly I think the
schools should be required to provide a real education for the players at ANY
time in their life post graduation and some kind of revenue sharing.

~~~
hobofan
Are those millionaire/billionaire alumnis making donations? To me it sounds
really strange that "normal" alumni would donate to their university in
addition to the already expensive tuition they pay off over decades.

~~~
grogenaut
Many of the major donors who were doing things like funding buildings would
also toss in a tennis court or jerseys for all of the teams.

The low end donations were also a lot higher for anyone in a club. The school
allows targeted donations. So if you wanted you could donate to sports.

They also have smart alumni things. For instance for $2000, I can buy a plaque
over the locker for the player with my number (essentially buying the number).
It would have been $500 but 2 of them got in a bidding war, and $2k is the
price to knock them both out.

------
magashna
Sounds like students opt-in to this to get rewards later. It's not a penalty,
it's more like you don't get a free lottery ticket.

~~~
falcrist
It's still a bit orwellian to manipulate students into installing a tracking
app like that.

Couldn't they just have the students who want to opt in swipe or tap their
student IDs as they enter and again as they leave?

~~~
mikeash
What would you do if someone wants to leave without swiping? Hold them there
against their will? That would be eight million times more Orwellian than
asking them to voluntarily install an app in exchange for some points.

~~~
pavon
You are free to come an go any time you want, swiping or not, but only people
who swipe in before the game starts, and swipe out after the game ends would
get entered to win playoff tickets.

It would be easier to game (you could leave for part of the game and return),
but is less invasive than the app approach.

~~~
Donald
Students would just give their cards to their friends who were staying at the
game.

~~~
falcrist
Students could just give their phones to their friends.

------
mindslight
This is one of the thousands of tiny abuses enabled by everyone carrying
around a corporate surveillance device in their pocket.

Apple/Google could end this _tomorrow_ by implementing permission systems that
allowed users to change the data received by apps. A workable user friendly
interface might be "location pinning", where you could check a box to store
your current location and keep reporting that location until you said
otherwise. And if app developers insisted on fighting back and inferring
whether data wasn't noisy enough, the OS could easily step up its game by
adding in synthesized drift, even across multiple users.

The problem is that smartphone OS developers are trying to serve two masters -
their users, but also the surveillance-minded app developers. They're
pretending it's possible to remain neutral in the face of a huge power
disparity, but what they're actually doing is forcing the user to remain open
to inspection by hostile code. Even LineageOS stonewalled the patches to
support microG instead of simply accepting them into the state of the art and
moving on!

If we as users want to be in control of our own devices (and for our society
to not turn into a totalitarian shithole, we really do!), then we need to
accept the worthiness of _lying_. No matter who it was written by, the code on
a user's device should be working for the interests of the user. App
developers already have a place to run the code that represents them - _on
their own servers_.

------
sizzzzlerz
Saban could fire off pistols like Yosemite Sam down the main street of
Tuscalosa while hammered drunk and the university would just smile and say "He
just better beat Auburn". Why would anyone think he shouldn't get away with a
little violation of privacy?

------
cwkoss
College football is a cancer on our societal productivity. Saban should be
fired for his disregard for the safety of students. Baking the brains of
thousands of students to impress a few dozen athletes is really stupid.

Not to mention the damage to the brains of student athletes colliding into
each other.

------
stirbot
Towards the end of my time as a student at the University of Michigan I
stopped buying tickets to the games. Between the crowds, security, drunk
strangers, the sun in September or the cold rain in November - it's just more
fun and more comfortable to watch at home with friends.

~~~
rorski
The crowds and drunk strangers are the major reason why people go to games.
And tailgating for most sports fans is fun. Of course you get a better view of
the game at home, but the live atmosphere can't be replicated by any TV.

~~~
magduf
Exactly. Hanging around and drinking a lot, and being around a bunch of noisy,
drunk people, is something that most Americans greatly enjoy.

~~~
rpmisms
Well, most of us are Irish and German, so it does stand to reason that we
would enjoy those things.

~~~
magduf
My genetic background is mostly from those places too, yet I'm not like that.
Those things are cultural, not genetic. Americans are loud and boorish because
they choose to be.

~~~
rpmisms
America draws a lot of its culture from those two countries, but my point was
more facetious than literal.

------
_match
The prejudice and ignorance in these comments are astounding, so I'll try
address the major themes.

I'm defensive because, though I rarely watch the games, I enjoy listening to
postgame interviews with the Alabama coach, Nick Saban. He's found
unprecedented success in a brutally competitive field by following a textbook
stoic philosophy people in the south call "The Process", by encouraging
relentless pursuit of perfection in each individual's role, and showing little
concern if that results in a win or a loss.

In every speech to players and fans he recites a quote by Martin Luther King,
Jr: "If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like
Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ...
Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all
the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great
street sweeper who swept his job well."

\-------

> "If students are leaving early, they must not be enjoying it"

Alabama typically wins games by 30-60 point margins (a touchdown is 7 points).
Like any sport, close games are more exciting than blowouts. The students are
getting bored in the last quarter, and leaving to return to tailgate parties
and get drunk or avoid the traffic. Saban felt it was disrespectful and
demotivating to the players who worked hard to win such staggering victories.
In the genesis postgame interview, he yelled, "I've never been to a tailgate
in my life!"

\-------

> "American obsession with college football is absurd"

Generally, we hear this from self-hating Americans who wish to be European and
American-hating Europeans who feel America is the source of all of their
problems.

And generally, they share an obsession with soccer, or superhero movies, or
something equally ridiculous as football.

American public universities are spread relatively evenly throughout the
country, but major cities that support a professional team are not. So in the
southeast and midwest, people rally support around local universities in the
way that people in cities do for professional sports in America and in Europe.

Most of the fans of these university football teams never attended the
university, but they are proud to still be apart of these traditions and it
contributes tremendously to community cohesiveness. If you go to any southern
tailgate, you'll see people from all ethnic groups and economic classes
enjoying their time together.

Yes, this is tribalism. But maybe a little tribalism is good when half of the
posts on hacker news are about the profound loneliness emerging in American
society.

\-------

> "It costs too much money"

Small private school football programs are struggling, yes. But many of them
will not survive education changes in the coming decades regardless.

But football is very profitable for large public universities and funds other
Title Nine sports programs like, most importantly to me, women's soccer. Title
Nine is the best explanation for why we are so dominant in the Women's World
Cup.

\-------

> "Sports are a waste of time"

Yes, as are many of the things we choose to do with our time. Hopefully, no
one is judging you for your unproductive time. But it sounds like many here
are apart of a subgroup, like me, that didn't have much of a connection to the
popular or well-adjusted kids in school. And so we find solace in looking down
upon the things they enjoy. But being unjustly judgmental does not make us
better than them, it makes us pathetic.

~~~
watwut
Sounds like your response to "students are not enjoying it" is just explaining
why they are not enjoying it. They want to be elsewhere and do something else.

It is not disrespectful to not attend sport event you are not interested in,
no matter how hard players trained.

~~~
_match
You're right, I didn't make that point well.

This Alabama coach is famous for erupting in anger during the last play of the
game if his player makes a mistake, even when they are winning 60-0.

To him, every moment matters equally, whether in practice or in the
championship. And he considers support of the students and fans to be key in
the performance of the players.

The students there LOVE being apart of a winning program. They enjoy the first
half when Alabama walks over almost every team in the country.

Saban, i think, feels that the students are threatening the part they enjoy by
not staying to the end.

I agree with you that he's probably wrong about that, but I also kind of
respect the attitude. And so do most of the fans as you'll see them now
happily sitting in the rain until the last second to show their solidarity.

------
cbhl
I have had a few teachers who allocated points of the overall grade for
attendance and/or participation. I don't entirely disagree with this approach;
in some cases students can do better in school with the right nudge.

The tracking methods range from the low-fi to the high-tech: from a paper
attendance checklist, to a Scantron sheet, to iClicker "student response
system", to clicking buttons in an online portal.

But I do feel uncomfortable with the escalation of technology being used to
perform this task. Scantron sheets being fed into auto-dialers that can call
the wrong parent if the teacher bubbles the wrong line. And now, some schools
are now running pilots using facial recognition attendance systems.

------
addicted
This seems fairly quaint compared to all the other tracking we are subjected
to, to be honest.

------
tqi
When I was a student, I was required to buy a little clicker that I used to
answer mini quiz questions at lectures. Professors used that to track
attendance. Yet there were no breathless NYT pieces about how Professors were
tracking student locations...

Is it only "Orwellian" when GPS is involved?

~~~
craftyguy
The app won't magically be incapable of tracking students outside of the
stadium, so the risk of abuse is exceedingly higher than your little clicker
thing which likely didn't have the range to track you from very far away.

------
dusing
Developer of the App here, we do this for many NCAA and Professional sports
teams. Any questions?

~~~
craftyguy
So you're saying this statement in the article is incorrect?

> The app it created for Alabama is the only one that tracks the locations of
> its students.

------
humbleMouse
Ethical concerns aside, why didn't they do some simple load testing before
putting the app in production? Seems like it would be obvious that your api
needs to handle 17,000 requests at a time if your making "fan" software for
college football games.

~~~
cabaalis
It also looks like they just alert the HTML of the error response when it
receives anything other than a success. Seems like an example of not UX fault-
testing your app.

------
gffrd
> the University of North Carolina uses location-tracking technology to see
> whether its football players and other athletes are in class.

Oh my.

~~~
brewdad
But can they track whether the student or the tutor wrote the term paper?

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shujito
is there a way to read nytimes articles with javascript disabled? (other than
archive.is, I use cloudflare DNS)

~~~
inetknght
Use Firefox then prepend `about:reader?url=` to the link

~~~
shujito
works great

------
hnburnsy
Can enterprising students run this app in an Android Emulator and fake the GPS
location during game time?

------
jmpman
If we make college free, like some politicians are proposing, does football
revenue even matter anymore?

~~~
dragonwriter
It matters even more: making the service free to students doesn't make the
inputs free to the college itself, and many plans for government funding
include outcome-based accountability for government subsidies (that's even
true for sone proposed reforms that don't make college free.), And no plan is
going to let colleges charge whatever they want and get the government to pay
he bill. One way to get better outcomes for the same government pay check (and
thus avoid being excluded) is to have excess revenues elsewhere to funnel into
academics.

And, that aside, prestige is going to still matter to college governing
bodies, and therefore to the leadership subject to and incentivized by them.

~~~
jmpman
Won’t the politicians just give even more money to the universities? Paint the
chancellor’s office, get a check from the government. Cancel the football
team, as it’s no longer politically correct, get even more funding.

------
irrational
Next step is tracking students' locations to penalizing them for not attending
the games at all. I attended a Division 1 school and in the six years I was
there (bachelors and masters) I never attended a sports event. It seemed (and
still seems) like an incredible waste of time and money to me.

~~~
s1artibartfast
If that was your experience, then you probably wouldn't mind the "penalty" of
deprioritized football playoff tickets.

------
exabrial
Penalize them? It's a football game.

------
MSFJarvis
Does American education keep this sport around only as a means to cover abuse?

------
test321
Better than China

------
dqpb
Honestly, this makes sense. I think people underestimate how much time, money,
and effort American universities spend to fully concuss their students. If
nobody's watching, then what's the point?

