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Monday, April 6, 2015

Competitive Balance in College Basketball... Per the NIT

A standard measure of competitive balance in economics is the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), which, in this case, is the sum of the squares of the number of championships by team i (c_i) during the designated period, over the number of champions during the period. By doing this for the NIT, we can gauge the competitive balance of the bubble teams: the fringe teams just outside the NCAA tournament field. I'm using the past 10 years, so n = 10 in the following equation:


The closer the HHI is to 1, the less competitive balance there is in the league. So if the same team wins the champion every year, HHI = 1 (10 years, 1 champion). For example, women's basketball's HHI is very high, as there have only been 3 different champions in the past 6 years (Connecticut has won it 4 times). If a different team wins the title each year, HHI = 1/10 (1/n, complete balance).

The NIT champions from the past 10 years are as follows:


There has only been one repeat champion, Stanford, so the HHI = (2/10)^2 + 8 * (1/10)^2 = 0.12. Complete balance would be 0.1, so the competitive balance in the NIT is very high.

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