Team success and jersey color

I'm going to make an effort in 2011 to talk more about papers. We'll see how long it lasts.

Nonetheless, here's a new paper concerning the color of sports team's jersey is a determinant of success-- the abstract:

Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron) arguably the most famous fighter pilot of all time painted his plane the vividest of red hues, making it visible and identifiable at great distance, showing an aggressive pronouncement of dominance to other pilots. Can colour affect aggression and performance and if so is it observable within team sports? This study explores the effect of red on sporting performances within a team sports arena, through empirical analysis of match results from the Australian Rugby League spanning a period of 30 years. While the descriptive analysis reports a positive relationship, the multivariate analysis provides some mixed results once you control for team effects. Thus, more evidence at the team level is required to better understand whether teams in red do enjoy greater success controlling explicitly in a multivariate analysis for many factors that simultaneously affect performance.

One factor that needs to be considered (and is brought up): If I'm wearing red, presumably the impact is larger upon my opponents than it is on me (as they're viewing my uniform more than I am)-- so it's not an issue of red making me perform better, if the effect exists, but rather making my opponents perform more poorly. Now, granted, the effect may be diminished in team sports-- if my basketball team wears red and I'm on the court, I see five opponents wearing, say, blue, while I only see four teammates wearing red. Individual sports would be the place to find some better natural experiments-- particularly in the Olympics, and they cite a paper that does exactly that. (Which, by the way, has the fantastic policy suggestion in the abstract "that the colour of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.") But, to me, it seems that with team sports the problem is just too muddled.

I was surprised that Tiger Woods was not mentioned once.