Bill Belichick is the luckiest man in America this week.  While Pete Carroll is being pilloried in the press and at the water cooler following a questionable play call at the end of the game, it should have been Belichick whose coaching reputation took a throat punch on Sunday night.

But wait, you say: Everyone, and I mean everyone, contends that the worst coaching decision in Super Bowl (Football??) history was indisputably Pete Carroll’s decision to throw the ball on second and goal from the one-yard line with twenty-five seconds to go in a game his team was trailing 28-24, especially when he had one timeout and the beastly Marshawn Lynch in the backfield.  At first glance, this view seems rational.  This was likely the wrong call.  In fact, I will agree that it was probably a bad call, but not as bad as Belichick’s call forty seconds earlier.  Not nearly so.

Do I have your attention?

Rational football fans (and economists who aren’t football fans) can agree that whether or not a play call is a good one or a bad one must be judged from the standpoint of the decision maker at the time the decision was made – before the outcome of the call is known.  It is simply disingenuous to evaluate a call after considering what actually happened.  The only honest and fair analysis involves evaluating percentages.

Furthermore, the most accurate measure of just how bad a coaching decision was can best be determined by measuring the difference between the probability of success of the course taken and the probability of success of the course that would have maximized the probability of success.

So, for example, determining whether Carroll’s decision to run a passing play (rather than kicking a field goal) from the 10-yard line with 0:06 left on the clock at the end of the first half while trailing 14-7 was or was not a good call cannot take into account what actually happened.  On that play, a variety of outcomes could have occurred – incomplete pass in less than six seconds (leaving time for a field goal), incomplete pass that ran out the clock, a completed pass short of the goal line than ran out the clock, a sack that ran out the clock, an interception, etc.  I am fairly confident that Nate Silver would tell us that the rational (efficient) move in that situation would have been to kick a field goal.  Take the points and the momentum into halftime. But Carroll rolled the dice . . . and scored a touchdown.  It was a “gutsy” call, many would claim, and shows his coaching prowess.  But it was only a gutsy call because the 15-25% probability event occurred.  But that is simply not a rational way of evaluating the play call.

Likewise, had Russell Wilson completed the pass for a touchdown at the end of the game, Carroll’s call would have been labeled “inspired” because everyone on the field, in the stadium, and in the television audience knew the rational decision would be to give the ball to the Beast.  But the call that was made, even had it resulted in a touchdown, would have been the same call.  Again, we need to judge the wisdom of the call by evaluating the relative percentages of the possible outcomes.

Let’s break it down.  Here is what we knew the moment Marshawn Lynch’s knee hit the ground with 1:02 left in the game after being tackled at the one-yard line after a four-yard gain on first down:

Seattle had one time out left and the clock was running;

Marshawn Lynch is in the backfield, and he had gained four yards in the prior carry;

Russell Wilson is a smart quarterback (who won last year’s Super Bowl) and isn’t prone to boneheaded mistakes; and

New England is expecting a run.

But here are two other things Carroll knew, at least generally understood:

Marshawn Lynch had carried the ball five times from the one-yard line this season and had scored only once.

Over 100 passes had been thrown in the NFL from the one-yard line this season, and none had been intercepted.

Simplifying things just a bit (by removing a run/pass option that could have been called for Wilson), Seattle had two arguably rational courses of conduct at this point.  First, it could hand the ball to Lynch on second down (by this point, there were 25 seconds to go – no shame in huddling up here, especially since the clock was running).  If he scored, great.  If he didn’t, Seattle could either call a time out or spike the ball.  If they spiked the ball, they would get only one more play because the next play would be fourth down.  If they called a timeout, they would have 20 seconds left and it would be third down, but they would have no timeouts left.  At that point, they could either pass twice, pass once then run once, or run once.  It is unlikely they would have had time to run twice more if Lynch was stopped the first time on third down.  So if they ran on second down from the one, they would very likely get either two running plays, or one running play and two passing plays.  It is highly improbable that they would get two running plays and a passing play or three running plays.  (This could only happen if one of the running plays ended with the runner getting out of bounds).

The second rational course of conduct would be to choose to throw on second down.  If this happened, they could: score, the pass could be incomplete (thus stopping the clock), Wilson could be sacked, or it could be intercepted.  Let’s presume Wilson is smart enough that he wouldn’t have allowed a sack.  If the pass was complete, it would very likely be a touchdown and Carroll would be applauded for his courage and cunning.  If it was incomplete, then Seattle still had two runs from the one with Lynch, calling a timeout after the first one if he didn’t score.  So under this scenario – throwing on first down – the odds were very, very high that Seattle would get two running plays and one passing play from the one yard line.  The only risk was a miniscule chance of an interception.  Incidentally, the odds of Lynch fumbling were likely as high — or higher — than of Wilson throwing an interception.

Give any NFL, College, High School, or Pee-Wee Coach the following multiple choice question, and you will get the same answer:

If you are coaching the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl and have three plays to score from the one-yard line, which combination of plays would you choose?

1. One run by Lynch and two passing plays;
2. Two runs by Lynch;
3. Two runs by Lynch and one passing play.

This is not a hard question.  “C” is the correct answer.

Once again, I am not arguing the Coach Carroll made the right call.  He probably should have run the ball with Lynch.

But his decision is not nearly as irrational as it seems, given the benefit of hindsight.

So, pray tell, what call by Belichick was worse?

As noted earlier, when Lynch was tackled at the one on first down, there was exactly 1:02 left in the game.  New England had two timeouts and Belichick had a decision to make.  Once again, it is simply not acceptable to take an end view of what actually happened (interception on the goal line) and then judge Belichick’s decision not to call a timeout as wise.  If Belichick knew Carroll was going to call a pass play that New England would intercept, Belichick is a much better cheater than we even knew.  Instead, we must judge his decision from the standpoint of what we knew at the time.  We must examine the probabilities as they then existed.

The probability was that Seattle would score a touchdown.  And it would probably happen on second down.  (Lynch had just run for four yards on the prior play).  Belichick is a smart guy, so he knew that.  He knew that if Seattle scored, his team would trail 31-28.  He also knew that he had arguably the best quarterback to play the game standing behind him, and he had one of the best field-goal kickers in the NFL standing next to him.

Here is another easy multiple choice question.  If you are trailing by three points in the Super Bowl, would you rather have:

1. Two timeouts and 20 seconds to go 45 yards to kick a field goal to tie the game;
2. One timeout and 55 seconds to go 45 yards to kick a field goal to tie the game.

This is not a hard question.  Ten out of ten times, you call a timeout.

Play this out.  Say Belichick called a time out with 1:00 to go.  If Seattle scored on the next play, he would have no less than 55 seconds left and one timeout.  If Seattle didn’t score, then he would burn his final timeout, and then Seattle would have likely scored on third down.  If so, then Belichick would have no less than 50 seconds left and no timeouts.  If Seattle didn’t score on third down, then it would likely have taken the clock down to three seconds and then called a timeout.  After which the one remaining play would determine the season.  But the odds of that happening were vanishing small.  The best bet would have been that Seattle would score on second or third down.  In such an event, Belichick would have had at least 50 seconds, needing only a field goal to tie.  And remember, Brady and Gostkowski are stellar in the clutch.

Instead, Belichick chooses to let the clock run, and the ball is snapped with 25 seconds remaining.  This means that Seattle can run two or three plays (see discussion above) to take a three-point lead.  It also means that New England will have, at best, 20-22 seconds remaining to kick a field goal, assuming Seattle scored on second down.  If Wilson’s pass had been incomplete, then the best-case scenario for New England would have been 16-18 seconds to score if Seattle scored on third down.

In conclusion, I am confident that Nate Silver (or other number crunchers) could mathematically demonstrate that Belichick would have maximized New England’s chances of winning by calling a timeout with one minute to go.  I would also bet my left you-choose-the-body-part that Belichick’s decision deviated further from the optimal coaching decision than did Carroll’s decision to throw on second down.

Prove me wrong.

 

I’m not looking forward to the redeye tonight out of London’s Heathrow Airport bound for Uganda’s Entebbe Airport or the redeye back to London on Monday, but I am thrilled to be heading back to my adopted home country for a fifteenth time for a long weekend.

While Jessica is loving spending her sophomore year at Pepperdine studying in Florence, Joline, Joshua, Jennifer, and I are equally enjoying our semester in London.  We just returned from a seven-day Mediterranean cruise during the week-long travel break, and we are going to visit Jessica in Italy in a few weeks.  Pepperdine’s study abroad programs are life-changing for all involved, and we are just completing a successful fundraising campaign to preserve the law school’s fall program, at least for the next few years.

This long weekend trip promises to be busy and productive, as the projects we are assisting with are moving forward and picking up speed.  In the wake of our extensive summer project, the Judiciary has formally launched a national plea bargaining initiative that will provide over the next few months long-overdue access to justice for more than one thousand prisoners awaiting trial at prisons all over the country.  Among the 150+ prisoners we assisted over the summer, 40 have now been to court, with the others due in court in the next three weeks.  During this trip, we will be working on nailing down plans for further expansion of plea bargaining, and also discussing a couple other new areas of collaboration between Pepperdine and the Judiciary.  More to come on that front.

The documentary Revolution Pictures filmed this summer about our work is in the final editing stages and we are eager to see the first cut being prepared by director Andy Reale and shot by cinematographer John Pope.  We were quite excited to the see the two-minute “teaser” and look forward to the final cut.  Distribution/exhibition details will be forthcoming early next year.

Henry is thriving in medical school in western Uganda and will be taking an eight-hour bus ride on Saturday morning to meet up with me for a few hours.  We will also be meeting with his aunt, who has been trying to take Henry’s family land away from them since the death of Henry’s father (her brother) earlier this year.  While Henry was in the process of getting the land properly surveyed and titled, she apparently convinced a Ugandan government official to circumvent the entire process and to secretly issue the land title to her.  My hope is to help her understand that this undermining of the rule of law will not be tolerated.  I intend to be polite, but direct.  Incidentally, we are still waiting for a ruling in Henry’s appeal, which I argued more than eighteen months ago . . .

On Sunday, I will perform my first official duty as Godfather of the young son of Justice K, a judge with whom I have become quite close.  Tribal traditions dating back centuries dictate that the Godfather performs the circumcision just before the boy’s first birthday.  I have purchased a special trimming knife and have been practicing the art of taking “a little of the top” using British potatoes.  Wish me luck.

Actually, I am just kidding about the circumcision.  Young Mark will be baptized in the Church of Uganda and I will be announcing his names and presenting him to the priest for the baptism.

In other Ugandan news, there is still no sign of Ebola in East Africa – Uganda is twice as far from Liberia as Malibu is from Dallas – so I’m not feeling any anxiety about this.  Uganda still has not named a Chief Justice, though today’s paper quotes the Minister of Justice as saying that they are in the process of making a selection.  The Acting (interim) Chief Justice just announced yesterday that Uganda will finally do away with antiquated practice inherited from England of judicial wig-wearing in court.

Please pray for safe travel and a productive long weekend.

It has been far too long since I provided an update regarding what is happening on the ground in what has become my second home.  While I am currently residing in London with my family for the fall semester (serving as the Director of Pepperdine Law’s Fall Program), I am eagerly awaiting my next trip to Uganda six weeks from now.

Much has happened since I last took the time to prepare a blog entry.  Those of you who recall my friend and surrogate son, Henry, will be pleased to hear he is doing quite well.  When he and I first met in January of 2010, he was languishing in a juvenile prison waiting for a trial after nearly two years.  Late last month, Henry moved to Ishaka, Uganda and started medical school at Kampala International University.

He is living in a rented house with four other students and is thrilled beyond measure to be on the path toward his chosen career.  In a recent e-mail, he remarked, “What a joy I have!”  Thanks again to Colin and Amy Batchelor and John and Rosella Gash for teaming up to cover Henry’s tuition.  Over the next few weeks, I will be posting about his weekly schedule.

In other news pertaining to Henry and his family, the surveyors we hired to assist them in securing title to their family’s land (and protecting themselves against attempted land grabbing by relatives) have completed their work and have completed the paperwork.  We are now waiting to receive the official land title back from the government so they will be secure against illegal seizure by the relatives of Henry’s deceased father.

While the cost of securing the land title was substantial (more than $2,000), it will allow the family to subdivide and sell or rent small plots of the land to interested neighbors who would like to use the land to live and farm.  This will hopefully provide the family with sustainable resources to cover what was lost with the passing of Henry’s father.

In other national news, Uganda continues to be interesting and unpredictable.  Over the weekend, the Uganda police infiltrated and arrested members of a Somali terrorist cell with ties to Al Shabaab, which has wreaked havoc in Kenya recently with multiple massively deadly attacks.  A few weeks ago, the United States military killed the leader of Al Shabaab with the assistance of intelligence provided by Uganda.  According to the US Embassy in Uganda, the arrest averted an imminent terrorist attack.  Some of you may recall the coordinated bombings in 2010 in Uganda killing seventy-four during the final of the World Cup – this was carried out by Al Shabaab.

So far, Uganda has avoided joining the growing number of African countries recently infected by the recent Ebola outbreak.  Uganda, has, however, suffered numerous Ebola outbreaks in the not-too-distant past, though they have so far been kept away from the capital city of Kampala.

While Henry and I are still waiting for the ruling from the Ugandan Court of Appeals in the case I argued in March of 2013, the Court of Appeals has been busy with other important rulings.

In early August, the court ruled unconstitutional President Museveni’s reappointment of Benjamin Odoki as Chief Justice.  Odoki had served admirably as Chief Justice for over a decade, but reached the age of mandatory retirement (70) in March of 2013.  Uganda’s constitution allows for the temporary appointment of retired justices to fill vacancies, and the President had used this appointment power to put Odoki back on the Supreme Court.  And after Odoki was back on the Supreme Court, the President decided he could reappoint him as Chief Justice from his position on the Court.  But the Court of Appeals (Uganda’s constitutional court of first impression) invalidated the appointment, declaring Odoki to be ineligible for the Chief Justice provision.  It is not yet clear whether the Attorney General will lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court – the court on which Odoki still sits.  In the meanwhile, the Ugandan Judiciary still lacks a substantive head of the Judiciary.  Court of Appeals Justice Steven Kavuma is currently serving as Acting Chief Justice until this gets resolved and is managing well under the difficult circumstances.

But the Court of Appeals wasn’t content to make headlines only once that week.  Just a couple days earlier, the same court also declared Uganda’s much-maligned “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” unconstitutional.  This ruling gained world-wide recognition, making headlines in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere.  The Bill was not, however, struck down on its merits as the challengers hoped, but was instead invalidated on the grounds that Parliament lacked the necessary quorum to pass the law in the first place.  The court did not reach the merits of whether the Bill would otherwise have been in violation of Uganda’s constitution as a deprivation of privacy rights or whether the Bill runs contrary to numerous treaties and obligations to which Uganda has become a signatory.  This prudential approach of not reaching the merits of a constitutional challenge when the case can be resolved on procedural grounds is well established in the United States as well and is known as the “Ashwander Rule,” taking its name from a United States Supreme Court case in which the principle was announced.

As would be expected in a country that supported the law in overwhelming numbers, several members of Parliament are agitating to bring the Bill back to the floor to pass it again with the requisite number of MPs in attendance.  Stung by the avalanche of international criticism and painful sanctions endured in the wake of his signing the Bill the first time around, President Museveni seems to be less than encouraging of this idea.  Truth be told, he was not a strong supporter of the legislation in the first place, and only reluctantly acceded to Parliament in the wake of the looming national election a little over a year from now.  My prediction (and I have been wrong before) is that the issue will quietly be put on the back burner until after the early 2016 election and won’t thereafter be passed again.

With respect to the plea bargaining front, Uganda continues to make progress toward full implementation at all prisons.  While things never move as fast as hoped, change is hard and we are excited about the steps that are being taken.  My attempts to remain in the background were foiled a bit in a recent article reporting on the progress.

Finally, with respect to the documentary that was filmed in July, those on the Revolution Pictures team are quite excited about what they captured and are now editing into a film.  A couple weeks ago, we were sent a two-minute “teaser” to give us a sense of where things were headed.  Everyone on the Pepperdine side was pleased.  The editing process will be completed by the end of the year.  At that point, decisions about how and where it will be distributed will be made.

Thanks for following along.

The kids and I just returned from a three day trip to Edinburgh, Scotland.  We found out that Edinburgh had not changed much since our previous visits in 2003 and 2008, but the kids had changed a lot.

We took the five hour train ride from London Kings Cross Station to Edinburgh.  If you are a Harry Potter fan, you may recognize Kings Cross Station as the location of Platform 9 ¾ where Harry and his classmates take the Hogwarts Express Train to Hogwarts Castle at the beginning of each new school year.  Platform 9 ¾ has changed over the years from a simple sign hanging on the wall between platforms 9 and 10 in 2003, to a wall with a trolley coming out of it in 2008, to an elaborate set up in 2014 with a trolley full of props and a camera man and assistant there to hand you a wand and dress you up in your favorite house scarf.  You used to be able to just walk up to the wall and take your own photo, but now you have to wait in a line behind a dozen or more people to get dressed up and have a professional photo taken which you can purchase at the Harry Potter shop in the station.  They do allow you to take your own photo for free if you stand off to the side, but you still have to wait in line to get to the wall.

We had fun visiting familiar places around Edinburgh and recreating some photos from the past at Greyfriars Bobby and Edinburgh Castle.

We also visited the Museum of Childhood which has a huge collection of toys and the Palace of Holyroodhouse where the Queen of England stays when she visits Scotland.

Once again we were visiting during the Edinburgh International Festival when professional and amateur performers from around the world come to share their talents.  The streets were packed with people watching street performers and people handing out flyers to invite you to watch their production of drama, music, dance, comedy, improv, etc.  We enjoyed attending an improv production called Upstairs Downton which was a hilarious spoof of the television show Downton Abbey created from audience suggestions.

We left Edinburgh feeling tired from all the walking we did, but happy that we had seen everything we wanted to see, and knowing that this time the kids will remember it.