Saturday, August 16, 2008
Olympic Highlights
Just a couple of videos I watched tonight that were worth sharing. You can't embed them; you've got to go to the NBC site and attest that you've got some local cable service before they'll let you watch. If you're outside the US and want to cheat, just say zip code 94518, Concord California, Comcast, and your local market is SF, and you should be allowed in.
Anyone following the Olympics has heard endlessly about Michael Phelps quest to win 8 golds in this games, which would break Mark Spitz's record of 7 from about 36 years ago. (They're calling Phelps' golds the "Great Haul of China." Yes, you may groan.) Phelps has already shattered the
lifetime gold medal total, with one event to go this year and firm plans to keep training and compete in 2012. Sure, the most career medals is sport-dependent; you've got to be a sprinter, a swimmer, or a gymnast to have a shot at it since you can pick up 4 or 5 per games in those sports. (The all time record of 18 total is by a female gymnast.) So sure, some sports have a chance to win multiple medals, but it's not like it's easy to be the best sprinter, swimmer, or gymnast in the world. Much less to do it twice, four years apart. Or thrice, eight years apart. You don't see too many Olympic champions in such sports past the age of about 25. Or 20, when it comes to female gymnastics these days. Or 14, when it comes to
the Chinese female gymnasts.
On the other hand, there are some sports that are finesse and precision based, and don't require the speed and strength only available from 20 year old lungs and legs. Check out
this Hungarian fencer. He won medals in 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960. Seven golds total, and if there had been Olympics in 1940 or 1944, his total would surely have been higher. I don't think we'll see Michael Phelps churning out 200m butterfly world records in his 50s. (Then again, a female US swimmer
qualified first for the women's 50m freestyle, and she's 41.)
Phelps has come out on top in two amazing races thus far.
The
mens 100m freestyle relay was widely-called the best relay race in the history of the Olympics. Phelps led off and the US team was in the lead after the second swimmer, but the third guy was slower and the 4th French swimmer was a rocket for the first 50m, and had damn near a body length lead. The annoying, screaming, jingoistic US announcer said, "The US should hold on for silver." with about 30m to go, since the French anchor swimmer was so far ahead. And then it started to look like he was dragging an anchor, his big lead shrank remarkably, and the US swimmer, Jason Lesak, just Jaws'ed him over the last half length of the pool and out a victory for the team by .08 seconds. Thus keeping alive Phelps' chances of setting the all time Olympic record of golds in a single games. You can not watch the last 30 seconds of the race without saying, "No way. No way!" as the huge lead fades and the crowd roars.
Phelps'
seventh gold came in an even closer race in the 100m butterfly, and one with perhaps an even more amazing finish. I just watched this one about five times, and I'm still not sure how he caught up. The Serbian swimmer was a good half body length ahead with about 25m to go, and he was swimming well. He didn't choke it away like the Frenchman in the freestyle relay. He was well ahead with just a meter to go! But he took his last stroke and glided for the wall, while Phelps took another full butterfly stroke and in the process of whipping his arms around he covered the last arm's length faster than the Serbian swimmer covered the last hand's length, and Phelps won by .01 seconds.
It looked like he lost. There was no way he won. Until they showed the super slow motion overhead camera, and you could see that yeah, he actually did it. How he didn't break his hands hitting the concrete wall of the pool at that speed, I don't know, but he just wanted it more than the Serbian guy, who had the lead and should have, by all rights, won it.
In non-video news, I was surprised to see that the Olympics is dropping women's softball after these games. Actually, I think I was surprised to see that women's softball was an Olympic sport at all, but it won't be after this month's festivities conclude. Some research informed me that softball was introduced in 1996, so this is only the 4th Games for it, and it looks like the American domination of it has spelled its doom. The US women lost a few games in the preliminary rounds in 1996, but still won the Gold. They went undefeated in 2000, and have really found their stride since then. In 2004 they won every game and outscored their opponents by a total of 51-1.
So far this time they're 5-0, and have won by scores of 11-0, 3-0, 7-0, 8-1, and 7-0. That's 36-1, if you're wondering, with 3 games yet to play.
I want to feel sorry for them losing their sport, but ehh... If
this sort of article is the best partisans can do to persuade me, I'm not shedding any tears. The big news in it is that the international softball federation is working to encourage people to play the game worldwide. They sent $2m total to 91 countries the last few years, to spread the game! Yes, that's two million dollars. To 91 countries. Over several years. Meanwhile there are probably 50 US universities that spend that much per year on their women's softball program.
If a sport isn't truly international, and one country always dominates it, I'm okay with it not being in the Olympics. There are plenty of odd sports in the Winter Olympics that are utterly unknown in most of the world (as is snow, which is why the Summer Olympics are such a bigger deal than the Winter), but so long as Norway, Sweden, Finland, and a few other Viking-esque countries are fighting furiously for the 10kg curling gold medal, that's cool. In retrospect, the US women would have been wiser to claim monthly issues and sit a few starters the last couple of times 'round. Would it have killed them to drop a couple of 3-2's to Japan and China in the preliminary rounds? I think not, and if they had they might still be underhand fast pitching and sliding into second in shorts in 2012 in Moscow, or wherever the hell the Olympics are next time.
Just to show I'm not only watching/following sports that the US wins (it's actually hard to find other ones with exciting finishes, since only the ones the US wins get written up on US sports sites, and I don't care enough to search widely, or sit through hours of odd sporting events through the online feeds),
check out the men's archery gold medal match. It features a Ukranian against a Korean, and try not to read the caption on the page if you click to it, since it's got an amazing surprise finish, with a choke by one guy and a clutch shot by the other. And since it's not a sport that was shown on US TV, there's no narration or interruption at all, which is nice after enduring that screaming idiot during the swimming. I'd much rather watch the direct camera feed from the arena, with the huge block of Korean fans chanting boisterous and well-rehearsed patriotic anthems between rounds.
Finally, speaking of things I'd much rather watch... hoofah. I defy any heterosexual male to make it through
this 1:13 of beach volleyball cheerleaders without your mouth sagging agape. Eight hot girls in matching bikinis and swiveling hips = sensory overload. They put the overly-costumed, grossly-cosmetic'ed, usually butter-faced cheerleaders you see at most pro sporting events to shame.
Labels: olympics, sports
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
If I remember how...
So, long time no blog. No real excuse; I've been busy running the Diablo 3 site, making a lot of forum posts, writing the wiki, setting up the columnists and editing their submissions, and working on a detective novel I'm writing with my dad. I have been doing a fair amount of blog-style writing, but it's been via email for an audience of one, since the I.G. has been out of town on her summer project for 2 months, and with not much else do to at night, and in need of distraction from the papers she had to write to earn credit for her ordeal, she's been quite finger (and voice) chatty.
None of that excuses me from at least managing semi-frequent updates here, though. Oh well, if you want a refund, I'll send it right over.
It's lame to, since I've had a lot of interesting stuff to blog about. And I've got a bunch of reviews to post; I have read a few of the literary classics I threatened to read when the summer began, and they're quite ripe for discussion. I wrote notes for them and squeezed them into my ratings matrix, so at some point I'll flesh them out and post them. Today though, I'm just going to throw up a few tidbits about this and that.
The Olympics have begun, and while I've not had TV since last fall (I have TV, but don't want cable and don't care enough to buy an antenna, so it's just a DVD-watching device), I've seen some of the coverage online. NBC actually has a really good online option. A great option really, one that's considerably better than watching them on TV. You can see almost every event live, without any announcers or commercials. And you can see almost every past event in its entirety, also without announcers or commercials.
To watch, go to the
NBC Olympics video page, and just click on anything. You get a pop up window with a good sized video screen, and navigation that lets you select every event in the Olympics. Each event then has dozens of videos to view, far more than you'd ever see on TV. You'll want to fast forward liberally though, since it's just a straight satellite feed and between events you get 10 minutes of random shots of the crowd, of referees talking with their heads close together, of workers rearranging the equipment, etc. It's just like being in Beijing yourself! Minus the smog and occasional deranged, homicidal, suicidal, knife-wielding locals.
I watched a variety of events; basketball, swimming, the opening ceremonies replay (shut up Bob Costas), and the ones I actually wanted to see; fencing and Taekwondo. The fencing is ridiculous; there's no vestige of actual sword play in the sport. Saber is the worst of the 3 forms, since everything above the waist is a scoring zone, and since they're pretending the electrified car antennas they're using for "weapons" are cutting blades, any sort of contact scores. The sport breaks down to a lot of twitching and pacing, until both guys (or girls) lunge and whoever hits the other a millisecond before they are stabbed themselves, wins.
Some of the female foil fencing was better, since the foil only counts if you get a stab, so there's some defense and blocking in close. A few times both women would end up face to face, trying to poke each other with weird "elbow bent by their ear" moves, like a pool player trying to hit straight down on a cue ball against the rail. Which is, of course, ridiculous in any form of actual combat, but at least it was entertaining on TV. Computer.
Unlike the TKD, which, under the Olympic scoring rules, was outright farcical. No pushing, no punching, no grappling, etc. Just kicking. Hitting the huge chest pad is worth 1 point, and hitting the helmet is worth 2 points. The arms do nothing in the sport, and the less skilled combatants often ended up basically
sumo suit wrestling (minus the laughs and dog piling when someone fell), while trying to do these absurd little half hopping kicks to the side, in hopes that they might graze the life vest-style chest padding.
Nutshell version: Olympic TKD is to actual martial arts as Olympic fencing is to an actual sword fight as
Tyra Banks wandering around LA in old clothes with a camera crew is to actually being homeless.
I wonder why, though? They have real boxing in the Olympics, after all. True, they wear very padded gloves and headgear, and the fights are only a few rounds so the endurance and strategy of real boxing isn't a big factor, but there's actual hitting and occasional knockouts. They don't stand 10 feet apart and wear space suits and sensor-equipped gloves, and engage in some fist-based version of TKD/fencing, where the goal is just to touch your opponent in a scoring zone an instant before they touch you. You try that hopping, touching-for-a-score bullshit in boxing, you get laid out, since it's actual combat, and power and accuracy and impact matters. Which makes me wonder how Olympic TKD and Judo and fencing have become such effete, reality-divorced displays, when they all started out as actual forms of combat? Dunno, but it's sad, and a somewhat painful viewing experience.
I've got a lot less to say about this, but
I highly recommend reading it. It's a nicely-detailed, inside-researched article about how Hillary Clinton achieved such an epic fail in the Democratic primaries. She came in almost as the presumptive nominee, with all the name recognition, all the money, all the media coverage, the ex-president husband, etc. And through poor planning, lack of strategy, constant adviser in-fighting, and just general incompetence, she let Obama snatch the pony out from beneath her.
I read political blogs every day, but I hadn't followed the gruesome details of the campaigns all that closely, so it was great to read such a well-researched article that could effectively summarize six months of conflict in 5 short pages.
Finally, I saw
these pics today, while doing the first gossip blog surfing I'd done in at least a week. (I was too tired after a long bike ride to do anything but slouch at the computer and move my mouse hand.) They're shots of the Jonas Brothers (who are apparently famous, in a boy band sort of way. I've no idea where they came from, but I'd assume some Disney show.) at an Mtv show, and the teenaged girls sitting near them going completely out of their minds. Turning red, sobbing, shaking hysterically, etc.
This is not a new phenomena, of course. It's been epidemic since at least Beetlemania and Elvismania, but it's not one I understand. Leaving aside the cheap joke material of comparing the flavor-of-the-week teenie-bopper Jonas Brothers to the Fab Four, what is it in adolescent girls that causes this sort of behavior?
It seems to be age or maturity-related; younger girls get squealy and hyper, and adult women might salivate, but they don't turn red and faint. It's some combination of post-puberty hormones, repressed sexual energy, Prince Charming fantasies, and some other things I don't know about and probably never will, having grown up with entirely different plumbing and psychology.
Labels: martial arts, politics, psychology, sports
Thursday, March 27, 2008
The science of a tournament bracket
The annual NCAA men's basketball tournament is underway, and as always, it's getting a lot of media attention. I've not seen any games nor do I care who wins, but I find the process people go through as they fill out their brackets and engage in office and online pools amusing. Basically, it's a huge crap shoot, with 64 teams in a single elimination bracket and no one ever picks even half the games right, since you've got to pick the whole thing in advance. One high seed loses early and you picked them to go to the finals = half your bracket is ruined. No one ever picks all the upsets, or backs all the correct favorites, and while I've never filled out a tournament bracket or been involved in such a pool, I imagine the winners of such things get some small % of the games correct. 25/63, or something like that, mostly in the early rounds when the higher seeds usually win, and then by the luck of picking a few of the #1 seeds that make the final four and rack up 4 or 5 wins on their way.
I bring this absurdity up since ESPN.com has an absurd
front page video interview today with some 15 y/o from Ohio; famous by dint of being the only person to get every game right so far, out of the hundreds of thousands who took the time to fill out the ESPN.com online tournament bracket. It's an amusingly idiotic interview, since the reporter woman is so earnest and respectful with her semi-worshipful questions about his selection methodology. The kid tries to play along, but it's pretty clear he can't take the whole thing too seriously. He didn't spend hundreds of hours researching this bullshit, and he doesn't really care who wins. He picked a few of the clear favorites, threw darts at random fun names for some upsets, and got really, really, lucky. This is why no one will ever pick every game right, and why exactly 1 person out of a million got even the first 2 rounds right.
What's funny about it is the reverence the ESPN reporter places on the idiotic subject, as if we could somehow learn from the kid's example, and emulate his successful research methods next year. No cable TV. Read the newspaper. Research online.
It reminds me of the stock market. Everyone who makes a living from financial markets must pretend that there's some science to it and that it reacts to logic and reason and that it can be predicted and controlled with the proper methods and tools. Clearly that's all bullshit; stocks go up and down largely at random based on irrational investor psychology, hot new things pop up and then go bankrupt just when everyone thought they were wonderful, and chaos theory reigns. No one picking stocks or investments is any more accurate than sports experts offering up their NCAA brackets, and none of those experts ever get even half the games correct. Who does? Random 15 y/o's from Ohio. Is that an investment leader you want to follow?
The one advantage of real life financial gambling is that you don't have to bet on every game, so to speak. You can just back UCLA and UNC and Duke and a few other mega teams/companies and count on them to be consistently profitable, while ignoring the hot, short term, trendy picks that make huge profits until, as the ongoing high risk mortgage meltdown, they go from being the best investments on earth to worthless in a matter of months. My objection is that people in the field, aside from the occasional honest Warren Buffet types, refuse to admit this. That's no surprise; they're selling an investing service and of course they're going to say you can be sure to make money with them, or in the market in general, since they're making their money by skimming off of your money. The house wants you to keep gambling, since their profits come from your action, whether you win or lose.
Labels: economics, sports
Monday, January 14, 2008
Playoff Football
Motivated by my old home town San Diego Chargers knocking off the defending champion Indianapolis Colts, to advance to the AFC title game against undefeated New England, I have to make a few comments.
First of all, no, I didn't see the game. I still don't have cable TV, nor am I likely to start paying $40 a month for it at this point, when the only thing I ever watch is football, and there are only 3 more football games left this season. Malaya was kind enough to tape a pair of the games for me last week, and she taped a couple more this weekend, so as soon as I find a chance to drive out to the East Bay I can pick those up and watch the SD@Indy and Jax@NE games on something larger than the streaming video screen of nfl.com.
Last weekend I saw a movie with Malaya and another friend during the day, and then got the tape and came back here afterwards, so I didn't know who had won when I started watching the tape. This time I knew I wouldn't be over to Malaya's until Tuesday (at the earliest), so I asked her to tape for me in case the games turned out to be entertaining. I wanted to see how well NE played when they defeated Jacksonville, and while I was going along with the herd in picking against San Diego, I had to have the opportunity to watch it just in case they managed to pull off the upset. Which they did,
gloriously enough.
There are tons of articles and opinion pieces up about the games already, but one I read and found amusing was the roundtable discussion on FootballOutsiders.com. The guys who run that site do some great work with statistical analysis and insight, which makes it all the more interesting that they fall prey to the same shortcomings that bedevil most sports journalists. Well, all sorts of opinion journalists, I suppose.
Before the season began they had all decided, based on relatively ancient history, that Norv Turner, the newly hired San Diego coach, was an idiot. He'd coached twice and had little success either time, and this was going to be more of the same. When San Diego, a team that went a league best 14-2 last year (before losing their first playoff game at home), started off 1-3 this year, everyone (across the Internet; not just on FO.com) agreed it was Norv's fault. He was still weak and indecisive and couldn't manage a game or exude the proper head coach authority, etc. Nevermind the fact that SD had lost their offensive and defensive coordinators, installed entirely new offensive and defensive schemes, played astoundingly well the season before, etc. SD They weren't off to a good start, and it was Norv's fault. It's quite difficult for an NFL team not to regress to the mean after a fantastic season. The 2nd and 3rd best teams last year, Chicago and Baltimore, both went 13-3 in 2006. This season they won 12 games... combined! And lost 20! But SD, which went 11-5 this year, was being dragged down by the horrible new coach.
And maybe it was Norv's fault early on, but SD won 4 out of 6 to get to 5-5, and they haven't lost since, running their streak to 8 straight, including 2 playoff games. In an objective analysis the credit for this would be split between the coaches and the players. The players weren't very good early on, presumably because the coaches weren't calling the best plays. As the new coaches saw what worked and what didn't they started running better schemes tailored to the strengths of their team, and the players started performing better.
As this improvement continued, most pundits gave credit to the players, as if they were overcoming the bad coaching that had bedeviled them earlier in the season. Now that SD has won two playoff games, and is one of the final four teams left in contention for the championship? Norv's still an idiot, who's getting lucky. Or so one would conclude from
the lengthy conversation between the football outsiders. A few quotes:
Some classic Norv Turner disorganization at the end of the third quarter. On defense, they get caught unprepared for Indy’s hurry-up and get called for offsides, right before Wayne’s awesome touchdown. Then after the ensuing kickoff, Chargers get caught with 12 men in the huddle. Way to have your team in the game, Norv… And then Philip Rivers and Sproles bail him out with a monster screen pass. Sometimes it’s better to have great players than great coaching.
I’m sure that our more negative readers will start asking when we begin to give Norv Turner some credit. I dunno, I don’t feel like the Chargers won this thing with coaching, but maybe I’m wrong and I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
Before anyone asks if my opinion of Norv has changed, I will point out again that Barry Switzer won a Super Bowl and that Rich Kotite won playoff games.
So San Diego won a huge game, on the road, against the heavily-favored, defending champion, Indy Colts. SD played this game with their best receiver almost entirely ineffective thanks to a dislocated toe he suffered last week. Their best player and starting running back got his knee hyperextended early in the second quarter and was unable to contribute after that. Their quarterback was playing on two bad knees and tweaked one in the 3rd quarter and didn't play after that. They had a field goal hit the upright and bounce back. They had an interception return for a touchdown just before the half that was negated by a fraudulently awful holding call. And they still won 28-24. If any other coach, especially one respected and perceived to be a good coach, had done this, his praises would be sung to the stars. He'd have rallied the team, he'd have overcome adversity, he'd have designed a brilliant gameplay, he'd have called perfect plays at perfect times, etc.
Because Norv Turner did it, a coach the pundits had long since decided was a fool, the post game comments revolve around a too many men on the field penalty (of the type the heady, no-huddling, quick-snapping Peyton Manning catches another team in at least once a game), another minor procedure penalty, and miscellaneous griping about "players bailing him out" and mentions of other "bad" coaches who won playoff games. Much like political reporters, sports journalists latch onto an existing storyline and then do all they can to fit events into it. After all, it's hard to admit you were wrong, or to reevaluate your preconceptions in light of changing events.
For some other comments on the game, I'm not an objective observer, nor do I play one on the internet, so I'll freely admit to reveling in the
Colts' defeat> Chargers' victory. I must also bring up the fact that Indy took a dive in the last game of the season against Tennessee. Tenn's win put them into the playoffs over the Cleveland Browns, and sent Tennessee to San Diego in the first round. That San Diego beat them handily, and then marched into Indy and defeated the Colts is almost enough to make one believe in the karmic repercussions of Indy's poor sportsmanship in the last game of the season. I'm sure every football fan in Cleveland cheered wildly at the conclusion of Sunday's game.
Also, I've not seen any mention of it in post game articles, but who will be the first sportswriter to resurrect the "
Peyton Manning chokes in big games" meme? It was the dominant theme of his career until last year, when his team won the Superbowl. Peyton played brilliantly in that game, and also in the AFC title game against New England, but he had nothing to do with his team getting that far. Peyton was awful in the first two rounds of last year's playoffs, and only got those 3rd and 4th chances since his team's defense roared to life and held their first two opponents to 8 and 6 points, in games when Peyton threw for minimal yards and put up a 1/5 td/int ratio. Those 2006 efforts, either or both of which should probably have been fatal to his team's playoff life, followed awful efforts in losing in the playoffs in 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Indy went 14-2 and was the #1 seed in 2005, before losing their first playoff game to Pittsburgh. Manning didn't win the game, but he wasn't the sole reason they lost, either.
Those pro failures came after a distinguished college career in which Manning broke all sorts of records but choked and lost in big games near the end of his Junior and Senior seasons. The best part? The year after Peyton graduated and was picked #1 in the NFL draft, his college team went 13-0 and won the national title, run by a quarterback no one
has heard of since.
With that history in mind, I think it's fair to say that if not for the Indy defense driving them to improbable wins in the first two rounds last year, Peyton would still be the modern day Dan Marino; capable of amassing gaudy stats against crappy teams in September and October, before wilting in January's playoff pressure. And, since his little brother Eli Manning's NY Giants are improbably in the NFC title game, after defeating Dallas, this week would be non-stop idiot chatter about how Eli might be the first Manning with the stones to lead a team to real post season success.
In that light, I guess I'm glad Peyton won the Superbowl last year, since if he hadn't a full week of that bullshit, culminating in the Giants' inevitable 31-13 defeat next Sunday in Green Bay, a loss that will no doubt be largely hung on Eli's four, snow-assisted interceptions, would be damn hard to take. And I don't even have TV to see the idiot talking heads on ESPN spin the narrative!
Labels: football, sports
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
BCS Debacle
The annual "why the hell don't they have a proper playoff system for college football" debate is well-underway, and as usual, there's plenty to complain about. The bowl game system is historic and lends itself well to pageant and rivalries and civic pride, but it's horrible for determining the best team in the country, and the BCS matchup business has done little to improve the situation. Almost every year there's controversy; two years ago there were 3 undefeated teams at the end of the year, and two of them played for the title while the other was left to the table scraps. This year it's worse, in the other direction. No major conference undefeateds, and only 2 one-loss teams, only one of which didn't lose terribly late in the season. Ohio State is the 1-loss squad, but they played the easiest schedule and they come from the Big 10, where there's no championship game. They're matched up against 2-loss LSU for the title, while 2-loss Oklahoma, USC, Georgia, and a few others gnash their teeth over not getting their shot.
The ideal result under the BCS is that there will be two major conference undefeated teams each year, and they can be matched up. Failing that (the usual state of affairs), there's one undefeated and several top one-loss teams, one of whom is anointed to take on the undefeated team for the "championship." Even that is problematic, since which 1-loss team to pick is open to debate, and there's always the potential scenario when the 1-loss beats the undefeated in a sloppy, 13-10 type game, while other 1-loss teams win 47-6 and look majestic doing it, thus arguing that they were better, if they'd only been given the chance to prove it.
The title game isn't until next week, but several of the alsorans have had their day, and things are shaping up nicely for a huge controversy.
USC and
Georgia both demolished their opponents today, and the articles about those games are chiefly about how well each team is playing now and how much they'd love to play for the title next week. More two-losers, #3 Virgina Tech and #4 Oklahoma, play later this week, and if one or both of them steamrolls their opponents they'll join the chorus.
The only real hope for a consensus champion is if Ohio State whips LSU, since that will preserve Ohio State as the single 1-loss major team. Well, Kansas could also have just one loss if they beat Virgina Tech this week, but they played a soft schedule and lost their last game to Missouri, who then got butchered by Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game, so they can't argue too loudly. Even the Ohio State over LSU scenario is a big iffy though, since Ohio State's one loss was late in the season to Illinois, who USC just beat by 30 points in the Rose Bowl, giving USC a pretty good transitive property argument for the title.
The irony is that I was going to write this post this morning and say that Hawaii should be the champs, if they beat Georgia. They were from a lesser conference and hadn't played top opponents, but they were the only undefeated team, and if they ended undefeated after beating a top 5 team, they would have earned my vote. Not that I have one. But they were filleted and broiled this evening, so that scenario is irrelevant.
The ideal system, which will of course never happen, would be a larger playoff that necessarily incorporated the bowl games. It would be quite easy to slot the same BCS teams into a playoff, or simply do the games as they are now, and say the top 2 teams after this round will play next week for the title. This year that wouldn't work out real well, for reasons belabored above, but most years it would serve tolerably well.
I'd like to see a real playoff, pick the top 8 teams (16 is too many more games, and there are never 16 teams with a legit claim to the title), or just 4. Eight teams would mean 7 games spread over 3 weeks, and would provide a indisputable champ every time. That's too perfect though, so let's compromise and say 4 teams. That's just 3 games over 2 weeks, and it would fit perfectly into the existing BCS time table. The title game this year is not until the 8th, when both Ohio State and LSU will step onto a field with a crowd watching for the first time since about November.
Picking the 4 teams will always be an argument, but it'll be easier than picking just two. Most years there are 3 or 4 teams with legitimate claims to play in the title game; this year there are 6 or 7, but at least with 4 teams to pick from the margin for error is wider and the team being left out is arguing for #4/5, rather than #2/3. Plus of the four you do pick, the champ has to win twice, against two of the other top 3 teams in the country, so there won't be any claiming it was a fluke, or they were undeserving.
This year of the upset the selection of the 4 would be harder than ever, but let's just say LSU, Ohio State, USC, and OK. I won't go into arguments against all the bridesmaids, but strength of schedule and head to head play and all that would be hotly debated. The 4 picked are seeded, 1v4 and 2v3, with the winners playing next week for the title. LSU beats OK, USC beats Ohio State, and then when USC and LSU play next week, it's for the undisputed title, and grumbling from Georgia and Virgina Tech and the others left out will be easily ignored when the real title game winner has 2 straight victories over top 5 teams to top off their resume.
Needless to say, this'll never happen. Expect to endure decades more contested titles and arguments about who should get to play for it for the rest of our natural lives. What the hell; it's something to do when bored over Xmas and during the always crappy last week of the NFL season.
Update: Useful
article on Sports Illustrated about this very issue. Much to my surprise, a 4-team playoff, as I advocate, is among the leading options.
A seeded plus-one is exactly like it sounds -- the top four teams at the end of the regular season would meet each other (No. 1 playing No. 4, No. 2 playing No. 3) in two of the BCS bowls. (Because the BCS wants to remain at 10 berths, a fifth non-title game -- either a newly created one or an existing one like the Capital One or Cotton -- would likely need to be added.) The winners would advance to the championship game, which, conveniently, is already being played about a week after New Year's.
Most proponents of a plus-one feel this would be the most effective format. "We've had quite a few years where there were three unbeatens or three one-loss teams," said Junker. "Unless you have two of them playing in a bowl game, you still might end up with three unbeatens or three one-loss teams."
A seeded plus-one probably seems insufficient to resolve this year's controversy, considering it would have included two teams (No. 3 Virginia Tech and No. 4 Oklahoma) that have since lost their BCS games while excluding two others (No. 5 Georgia and No. 7 USC) that dominated theirs. Most observers agree, however, that 2007 was an anomaly, considering there had never been more than four popular title claimants in any of the BCS' previous nine seasons.
The biggest obstacles to this appear to be the bowls, especially the Rose Bowl, which strongly desires a a game between the Pac-10 vs. Big 10 champion each year, as it always had before the BCS began. The Rose doesn't want their traditional conference champs playing in other games, the Rose doesn't want to be just a playoff game for the real title a week later, and the Rose doesn't even want to be that title game, if it means they might not have a Pac 10 or Big 10 team playing. And they have some valid points on all counts. This sort of thing is why politics is hard; achieving a greater good is virtually impossible when the parties involved have their own individual interests uppermost. As they usually do.
Labels: football, sports
Friday, December 28, 2007
Football Picks
I'll blog something about the vacation and post some Wild Animal Park photos later today, once I take care of some errands and wash clothing and catch up on the online news and other fun post-vacation activities. I wanted to share a link first, though. I've not posted much about sports this year, likely to the relief of most of you. That's not going to change any time soon, but while I've not been blogging about the various national pastimes, I have been reading about them. But not watching them, since I had my free cable turned off in October, and haven't missed it enough to pay $40 a month to have it turned back on.
(My cable was left on when I moved into this apartment in January 2007. I called Comcast and told them I didn't really want it and they said not to worry about it, since it was left on when new people moved into an apartment and that it would be turned off soon. I next heard from them in October. Yes, 10 months of free cable. No, it didn't make the occasional TV show I watched any more entertaining. I don't know if they'd ever have noticed, but they were upgrading the cable box to my apartment complex and checking on all the subscriptions and trying to sell us on premium packages, or cable modem/home phone bundling, etc. And they must have noticed that I wasn't a customer, but that I had cable, and when they finally asked me about it, I told them to turn it off. It was mostly self-preservation; I'd hardly watched any TV all year, but since college and pro football season had begun in September, I'd been pissing away an alarming % of my weekends watching games on tape, and with all the college work I had, that wasn't wise. So I've had no TV for more than two months, and haven't missed it. I'd have liked to see a few football games, but I got over it, and NFL.com has HQ video highlights of every single game, with far better production and detail than the highlight packages I used to watch on ESPN. Better yet; no Chris Berman!)
So, no watching football on TV = no blogging about it, at least until now. I have followed the sport/league during the season, watching the highlights each week and paying some attention to who wins and which teams are good, though I have almost no rooting interest in anyone. I've enjoyed the Patriots' run towards a perfect 16-0, in large part because there are so many haters who take the failure/success of their favorite, or non-favorite, football teams so insanely seriously. I read a lot of political blogs, that write about subjects that actually, you know,
matter, and I've never seen 1/10th the insanely slobbering passion over any world-shaking event that I do on most MLB or NFL news items on ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, etc.
In addition to the Patriots' 16-0 effort, the second most amusing story this season has been The Sports Guy picking every game, and losing almost every week, to his utterly-disinterested wife.
Bill Simmons is probably the most popular online sports columnist, at least in America. He follows basketball, baseball, and pro football, and he's a knowledgeable sports guy, but more key to his success is that he writes entertaining, pop-culture studded columns that are generally interesting even if you don't care about the teams/sports he's discussing.
I don't know what sport Simmons would say is his favorite, but he spends the most column space on the NFL (aside from his all-Red Sox all the time binge during fall 2004) and fancies himself quite skilled at analyzing the league, predicting player and team success, figuring out the gambling lines, etc. Which is why it's been so amusing to see his non-fan wife whipping his ass all year, especially considering that she gave birth in September, and has seen about 10 minutes of football all year. This week's version of
Simmons' NFL picks column is by her, and the introduction is amusing, but the picks are just classic. Simmons' wife goes into her rationales and logic and theories and motivations for her choices, and it's just brilliant. I can't imagine the tooth grinding and wailing being done by gambling addicts as they read the reasons for her picks, given that she's dozens of games better than one would achieve by chance, and dozens more ahead of the picks of most die-hard gamblers.
Gamblers; there's a reason casinos and sports books just keep getting bigger and more profitable. You! You and your logic and reasoning and certainty that you know better than all those other sports addicts out there, and the fact that you remember your occasional wins and forget all those other weeks when your favorite team won by 9 but the line was 10.5 and you lost $200 because all the other bandwagon bettors drove the line up 2.5 points during the week. Some quotes:
Bengals (-2.5) over DOLPHINS
If it's an all-animal matchup, I always try to weigh that accordingly. Dolphins are cuddly and nice. I don't understand why any NFL team would wear aqua blue unis and call itself "The Dolphins," then not expect to get its butt kicked. They should go with the Spearfishers. I would have taken them if they were the Spearfishers.
Seahawks (+1) FALCONS
This was an easy one: I really love Seattle so I usually pick the Seahawks, and I rarely pick the Falcons because I don't like their name. If I had to pick five American cities that I'd live in other than Boston, I think I'd go Seattle, San Fran, New York City, Austin and Portland, Ore., in some order. I can't tell you the No. 1 city where I wouldn't want to live because I already hurt Dameshek's feelings once in this column. But let's just say it rhymes with "Schmittsburgh."
I'm not going to contrast Simmons' past picks, or excerpt and compare some from an insane gambling addict website, but I think it's fairly safe to say they wouldn't express confusion about team nicknames and uniform colors, or include their personal livability index.
And even if they did, they certainly wouldn't factor such considerations into their over-analysis of which team is likely to score more points.
Labels: football, gambling, sports
Monday, June 04, 2007
The Racism Triple Crown
No baseball player has hit for the "
triple crown" (leading the league in batting average, RBIs, and home runs) in decades, and it's quite likely that no one ever will again. In fact it's not entirely desirable that one does, since as baseball analysis has evolved the understanding of slugging percentage as far more important than batting average has grown with it. Most teams (and sluggers) prefer to boost their power numbers over their batting average, and hitting the ball far requires a harder swing with a bigger risk of failure (and reward). Hence we get regular double crown winners since RBIs and HRs have a lot of natural overlap, while the batting average title usually goes to speedy guys with great bat control who can punch a lot of singles without striking much, ALA Tony Gwynn or Ichiro.
On a related topic, while there's no actual racism triple crown award in baseball, and if there were it would probably have to be a quadruple crown with the growing numbers of Japanese players in MLB, I'd like to single out Gary Sheffield's recent effort. In an
interview with GQ magazine, he offered his thoughts on the declining percentage of black players in MLB, and managed to insult Whites, Blacks, and Latinos all at once.
"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them," he told the magazine.
"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man.
"These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."
Nifty, eh? In just a couple of quotes he called Latinos house boys who do what they're told, said that Blacks can't follow rules or behave themselves in a professional work environment, and implied that Whites are the evil, controlling puppet masters who manipulate the darker races for their own benefit.
Sheffield's being roundly-castigated for these remarks, but does he deserve it? And in an not necessarily related question, is he correct? Given that the owners of professional sports teams in the US is probably around 98% white, it's kind of hard to argue his third point. His second one is hard to argue too, and since it's kind of a backhanded compliment to his fellow blacks (or at least a soothe to the non-conformist soul) it's not going to get him into too much trouble. What he says about Latinos can't really be construed as anything but an insult, so long as you value "being yourself" over following a few rules in order to earn millions of dollars for hitting a white ball around a grass field. I think the most easy and obvious attack on Gary's logic here is a favorite line of mine. "That's why they call it 'work.'" As every living human with a job can likely attest, you often have to do things you don't want to, and you're often treated poorly. That kind of goes with people giving you money to do a task for them. I'm sure in his real life Gary's entirely understanding if the car wash attendant, or waiter, or bellhop whose services he engages doesn't want to do things as he's told and wants to "go back to being who he is" and refuses to follow the rules or requirements of his job.
To put Gary's remarks in context, here's some recent demographic info on major league baseball players, from the same article:
According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African-American -- the lowest percentage since the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors' player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5.
I was surprised to see this, especially given that the NFL is at least 50% black, and the NBA is more like 80%. So is baseball really that different, in terms of the skill set required? Do baseball players have to put up with that much more bullshit and control from management, and is that sport somehow uniquely driving off the blacks who seem to have no problem adjusting to life as a professional basketball or football player?
It's long been news that baseball isn't as popular among American youth as other sports, and that it's especially under-represented in poor areas. I can see the logic there for basketball, since you don't need much/any equipment to play basketball. There are hoops up on courts everywhere, and any number of players, down to one, can spend hours playing and improving their skills with no more equipment than a bouncing ball and some sneakers. But football requires far more equipment and players and a bigger playing area than baseball, and it and baseball seem to both be supported by just about every high school in America. So why are black kids so prevalent in football and basketball, but not in baseball?
I think the sport itself offers some answers. Basketball and football are more about all around athletic ability. In a nutshell, you don't need to be an athlete to play baseball successfully. You don't need to be fast, or strong, or quick, or agile, etc. Those things can help, and some of them are mandatory for different defensive positions, but if you are brilliant and hitting or pitching the ball, you've got very good odds of making it in the major leagues, regardless of your other physical abilities. As John Kruk once said, "I'm not an athlete; I'm a baseball player." Kruk was fat, slow, and not very strong, but he had the ability to hit the ball, and for that he earned millions of dollars a year for more than a decade, before moving into a cushy position on ESPN's baseball tonight, from which he can dispense entirely irrelevant conventional wisdom into the ears of the perpetually-shrinking number of adult American men who still give a shit about "the national pastime."
Hitting a baseball is a very difficult thing, but you don't have to outrun anyone to hit it, or leap over anything, or dodge tacklers to get to home plate. You just stand there in the little box and wait for the pitcher to throw it, knowing he has to throw it at a certain height right over the plate. Pitching requires even less athletic ability, in that you merely need to throw the ball in some tricky way so that most of the hitters can't hit it. Pitchers don't need to run or catch, most of them aren't very good at fielding their position, and in half of the league they don't even need to hit. They have one job skill, and it's one that virtually any clumsy oaf, the kind of physical specimen who couldn't last 30 seconds on a football field or basketball court (unless the oaf had tremendous physical size, which pretty much rules out Latinos) can fulfill admirably.
My point here is not to rebuff or agree with anything Sheffield said, but to point out that the pool of potential baseball players is enormously larger than football or basketball, simply because those sports are self-limiting by requiring that their players be... athletes. (There are exceptions, of course. Quarterbacks and kickers are often akin to baseball pitchers in possessing one key skill, and behemoth size can make up for a lot of missing athletic talent.) Lots of baseball players are great athletes, but quite a few are not, and the sport is more about a painstakingly-acquired skill set that's largely dependent upon early immersion into the game and constant practice at the key ability -- hitting a pitch with a bat.
Temperament, the issue Sheffield was nibbling at, might well come into play in that, but it would require even more pop psychology than I'm willing to delve into. Does becoming a successful baseball player require a higher tolerance for correction and constant coaching than other sports? Do you have to listen to a hitting coach and learn from what he tells you and do things as they want you to do them, to a greater amount than aspiring basketball or football players? Is there a racial aspect to an individual's willingness to put in the time and concentration and effort required? Answering that seems to require far more generalization than insight into an individual's psyche, but if anyone wants to give it a try, I'll be happy to listen.
Labels: baseball, basketball, bigotry, football, psychology, sports
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Figure Skating
Ever wonder why it's always the men doing the lifting and carrying in figure skating pairs, and not the women? Well now you know.
Labels: sports
Friday, October 27, 2006
World Series Winners
I watched maybe 20 total minutes of this year's baseball playoffs, but since 15 of them were earlier this evening, when I turned on the TV just in time to see the 9th inning of the Cardinals
triumph in game five, I'm motivated to say something. I follow baseball idly, I just never watch since it bores me. I was therefore peripherally aware that Detroit had a huge lead, choked horribly down the stretch, and was lucky to make the playoffs at all. I also knew that St. Louis did the same thing over the past month, though I still had every confidence they would enjoy their semi-annual shellacking of the Padres in the first round.
At any rate, in light of the way StL and Det finished the season, it's not surprising they were given little hope of advancing through the playoffs. I am surprised just how unanimous the verdict was against them, though. I hadn't seen any playoff predictions this year, but after tonight's game ended the World Series, I checked out the expert picks on ESPN.com. Or at least I tried to; they were nowhere to be found on their main baseball page, and I eventually had to turn to google (via the handy quick search bar in Firefox). It's
not a pretty picture.
Of the 19
experts listed, not only did no one pick a Det/StL World Series, not one of them even picked
either team reach the World Series! Every single expert picked the Yankees to beat Detroit in the first round, and 18 out of 19 picked San Diego over St. Louis in their first round series. And the one guy who picked StL over SD, Enrique Rojas, got both first round AL series wrong, and was sure NY would beat StL in the NLCS anyway. I often joke about why I don't bet on sports, but if ever you needed more evidence, this year's baseball playoffs provided it. Almost complete expert agreement, and almost complete error.
Then again, if you're a "bet the underdog" type you could have rode that horse to some substantial profits this October.
Labels: baseball, gambling, sports
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