Some, notably Roger Noll of Stanford University, said they think professional teams are much like other private enterprises, and thus their inclination to collude should be tightly policed.

Spring training generates only about 2 percent of a team's total revenues, according to Roger Noll, a professor of economics at Stanford University who wrote the book "Government and the Sports Business."

Mathew McCubbins, Roger Noll, and Barry Weingast first defined the theory of bureaucratic drift in 1987.

Roger Noll, a telecommunications expert at Stanford University, holds out the tantalizing prospect that satellite broadcasters could effectively compete with cable if existing regulations were different.

Roger Noll is the Stanford economist who has produced a 65-page analysis of "Baseball Economics in the 1990's."

They remember Roger Noll from the first show.

Economists Paul Joskow and Roger Noll made a similar contention.

Roger Noll, a Stanford economist, testified that the salary cap does not foster competitive balance in the league.

When I asked Roger Noll, a sports economist at Stanford University, whether it is possible to compete with the N.F.L., he laughed, but he didn't scoff.

But that is not how Roger Noll, an economist at Stanford University and consultant to the players association, sees it.