“We’ll be back at nine. I plan to crash for a few hours. I’ll call you when I get up.”
I hang up, because I’m not giving her an opportunity say no.
19
Ellie
Week 2: Warriors 1-0
“Fuck,” Jack says, throwing himself down on the sofa.
“What’s wrong?”
The team got home this morning, and Jack had a meeting with his tutor over lunch. Apparently it didn’t go well.
“My tutor sucks. She spends more time trying to climb into my jock. I tell her I need her help and she hands me this paper.” He thrusts it at me. “What is this?”
I scan the paper. It’s a list of different models and a brief description of each. “An outline of sorts.”
“I signed up for this specific course because I thought game theory would be something I’d understand, but I don’t get even one of the concepts.” Jack looks anguished. “All these fucking models. I’m supposed to regurgitate this in a midterm and final?” His bleak eyes meet mine. “Ellie, if I fail the class, my eligibility will disappear. I need to at least pass the midterm. I should have dropped the fucking class.”
The time for that has passed, unfortunately. “What about the playoffs?”
“Not to go all Denny Green on you, Ellie, but what playoffs? I won’t even be around for those games if I can’t pass this class. What was I thinking?” He drops his head into his hands and groans.
“It’s Jim Mora.”
“What?”
“Jim Mora had the postgame rant about the playoffs. Denny Green did the ‘They are who we thought they were’ bit.”
Jack stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Jim Mora was a coach for the Indianapolis Colts whose postgame rant in response to a reporter’s question about making the playoffs went viral. Playoffs? What playoffs? he’s seen spitting out from the podium. Green, the coach of the Cardinals, played an undefeated Bears and almost beat them, until the fourth quarter where the wheels came off and they lost the game. Green lost his shit during the postgame press conference. The reporter had to feel grateful for that barrier, because Green looked one step away from introducing his fist to the reporter’s face. Kind of how Jack looks right now. He’d like to take physical action against something—the class, the course syllabus, his tutor.
I need to watch my words carefully so that it doesn’t look like I’ve been sitting in the same class for the last two weeks. I put the tutor’s worksheet aside.
“Okay. Let’s look at game theory from a football standpoint. Take Seattle’s last play in the Super Bowl. Both run plays and pass plays from the one yard line had a close to 60% chance of success. But any play can be defended if the defense knows what to expect. If the run game is more powerful, then the rational decision is to run the ball because their physical resources are geared toward running. But the Patriots knew that Seattle had a more powerful run team, so their expectations play a role. Seattle decides that the expectation has a higher value than the powerful running game and calls a pass play.
“You have the statistical average of success of any given play impacted by the physical resources—your players—measured against the opponents players and the players expectations.”
“The political parties are opponents and the election is their Super Bowl, with the primaries and all of the stuff that comes before it acting as the season.” He’s starting to get it. Maybe I won’t have to do anything for him. He makes a few notes. “How do I find out the statistical chance of success?”
“Demographics. I guess that’s why polling is so popular. The parties try to analyze the likelihood of success of a position before moving to the bargaining table. Individual actors, such as the president, can increase or decrease bargaining power based on the position of power.”
“Size up the strengths and weaknesses of a certain political structure, the general mood of the electorate, and then predict?”
“I think that’s a fair analysis.”
“But there are like a dozen different models.” The space between his eyes gets tight.
“It looks by the syllabus, you’re only studying four of them.”
That cheers him up considerably. “Thanks, Ellie. That helps a lot. I don’t feel as helpless as I did before.”
“So your grade is a midterm?” I ask, pretending I don’t know.
“An ungraded one, a few assignments we can do outside of class by logging into our student account, and then a final paper. Five thousand words on one of these models applied to the passage of a National Marriage Act.”
“I’ll proof whatever you need me to proof.” I’m dreading the paper myself. I don’t fully grasp game theory and I foresee a lot outside-of-class reading in order to manage two extra papers—one for Jack and one for me.
“Thanks.” He leans back and looks at the ceiling. “Maybe Dad is right, and I am a dumb fuck.”