You will never go broke appealing to people's vanity and insecurity

On January 6, And posted this request:

“I want an investigative report on GNC- there are two good sized stores costing I’m guessing a lot of money in at least 2 square miles of Back Bay, Boston. I never see anyone in those stores. I want to know what they are, really.”

Great question, and one that crosses the minds of millions of Americans every time we walk past one of those horrible stores. The answer is below the jump.

MORE after the jump…

Posted on January 26th, 2012 Filed in: Politics/Economics Tags: Ask Sparks, Sparks=Wrong

Good question, xTian.  My brother and brother-in-law started talking about this over the holiday, which got me thinking about it, too.  When considering bowl profitability, it is helpful to break it down into the profitability of each direct constituent:

• Network – Pays bowl owners for the rights to cover the game
• Bowl game owner – Pays teams to come play in the game
• Conference – administers payments to teams
• College – Participates in the game.

We don’t worry about the networks here.  They bid on the rights to cover the games, and try to sell advertising time.  This is their core business, and if they are any good at this, they make money.

We don’t worry about the bowl game owners, either.  They have typically cleared their expenses before tickets even go on sale (and remember: an empty seat is not necessarily an unsold ticket).  They are cold, ruthless profit machines that would sooner cancel a game than take a loss on it.  And as KB1 pointed out, they are richly compensated.

We also don’t worry about conferences.  They are just a conduit here, collecting participation payments and distributing cash out to conference members.  They neither make nor lose money.

The only entities here that could actually lose money are the colleges themselves.  A (long) look at them under the fold.  Note that I am using estimates and figures from different sources here.  The real numbers are close to correct, but not exactly right.

MORE after the jump…

Posted on January 4th, 2011 Filed in: Sports Tags: Ask Sparks, Sparks=Wrong, Sports, sports economics

As I sat there gleefully reflecting on the Big Ten’s 0-5 Bowl record this year I started thinking about something that has always bugged me about college football.

In Division 1 College Football there are 120 odd teams – How are there 35 bowl games?

It’s pretty galling, I mean less than a month ago, there was some concern that a team with a losing record would get a bid just so there could be two teams to play in every bowl – which is admittedly crazy.

The payouts for these things vary from 18M to 300K ( a pretty wild swing) and though I know that college football is profitable for the Texases and the Michigans I know that the Rutgers and the Central Floridas of the world struggle.

So let’s get some analyses going Sparks. How much money does college football generate? How is it distributed? Is it a good deal for every school? Are all these bowls profitable(stands are empty, smallish tv audiences, etc)? How awesome is it that TCU beat Wisconsin? Answer these questions or any others!

Posted on January 3rd, 2011 Filed in: Politics/Economics, Sports Tags: Ask Sparks, Sparks = educational (plagiarist), Sparks=Wrong, sports economics

Even though I work at a third tier company, there IS at least one thing that my company does really well: they’re really good about being as green as possible. Everything is recycled. All the materials used to construct the office interior was sourced from within a 500 mile radius of NYC (thus reducing carbon footprint of transporting materials). All the kitchen furniture was constructed by a local mill worker, etc. Also, the men’s bathrooms all use waterless urinals. They look like this:

But there’s something about these urinals that has me very, very puzzled.

MORE after the jump…

Posted on October 18th, 2010 Filed in: Life Tags: Ask Sparks

For this latest installment of Ask Sparks, KB2 and I have put together a real doozy. Here are the facts:

On Saturday evening myself, KB2, and 4 other friends attended the US Open. We sat in Ashe Stadium, in Section 311, Row Q, Seats 1-6. Throughout the evening we chatted intermittently with the folks sitting around us, including a group of 4 dudes in seats 7-10. One of the dudes was wearing a distinctive, but not crazy, camouflage baseball hat. They left in the 1st set of the 2nd match and we said goodbye.

On Sunday myself, KB2, and 2 of those same friends went to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had a great time. Afterward we decided to go to Stone Street to have some Guacamole and margaritas while we waited for a 5th friend, Chick, to join us. The hostess sat us at a communal table.

Sitting next to us at that communal table – camouflage hat guy and some other friends (not the same tennis friends). His name is Nimh. Pretty cool guy. Lives in Jersey City.

I’m not sure what exactly my question for Sparks is – but let’s go with:

“What are the chances that a group of people who randomly sit immediately next to another group of 4 people at 1 event in New York City, end up randomly sitting next to at least one of those people within 24 hours at an unrelated place and time”

Assume for this that we don’t have to recognize them – just the chances that it happens, not factoring in whether we notice it or not.

Posted on September 7th, 2010 Filed in: Entertainment, Life Tags: Ask Sparks