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2015: USA Sevens Rugby World Series

In 2015 Dear Sports Fan will be previewing the biggest sporting event of the year in each of the 50 states in the United States plus the district of Columbia. Follow along with us on our interactive 2015 US.

Nevada — USA Sevens Rugby World Series

Rugby — February 13-15, 2015 — on NBC, NBC Sports Network, and Universal Sport.

You know rugby, right? It’s like American football but the players don’t wear pads and you’re only allowed to pass the ball backwards. Also, play doesn’t really stop all the time like it does in football — it’s more of a fluid game, like soccer or basketball or hockey. It’s played mostly by crazy people from Australia and New Zealand. Well, rugby sevens is an exciting version of rugby played with half the number of people on the exact same size field. By reducing the number of players without changing the size of the field, rugby sevens play becomes way faster and higher scoring than it’s full-size counterpart. The sport is growing quickly and will be a medal-sport for the first time in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. One of the sport’s biggest organized leagues is a series of nine international tournaments played over the course of a year. This weekend, one of the nine tournaments will be hosted in Nevada at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. It’s the only one of the nine held in the United States.

Rugby Sevens has an interesting history. Many people believe it is the future of rugby but that doesn’t mean it is a recent invention. It’s current popularity could be said to have started in 1973 when the first international rugby sevens tournament was held as part of the sport’s 100 year birthday celebration. That’s right, the sport began in the late 1800s in Scotland! Over most of its history, it’s been thought of primarily a training ground for players to develop skills that they could use in traditional rugby. Today, this is less true than ever. Sevens is different enough and popular enough that few players cross from one sport to the other.

For a beginner viewer, the sport has some real advantages. It’s simpler to follow than the fifteen person version and it’s very, very fast. A game consists of two seven minute halves with only a one minute halftime break. In the time it takes to watch one quarter of American football, you could watch two whole games of Rugby Sevens. The championship match is a little longer, but even that is only two ten minute halves separated by a two minute half-time. There’s enough hitting to make you feel like you’re watching an extreme sport but surprisingly little of the disgusting bone/ligament/brain injuries that make watching football tough these days. Give it a try!

What’s the plot?

The stakes for this year’s Sevens World Series are high. The top four teams receive automatic qualification into the 2016 Olympics. Countries that don’t get these spots will still be able to get a spot in the Olympics by doing well in regional international tournaments or, failing that, another global qualification tournament. Still, this is the first chance to qualify and it’s a prized one. After four tournaments, South Africa is a surprise first place team, followed closely by New Zealand (which has won 12 of the 15 championships ever), Fiji, and Australia. Australia is trailed closely by the England team who are only two points behind them. The United States is in eighth place. For our team, that’s actually a pretty good showing so far. They’ve never finished better than 10th in a Rugby Sevens World Series. The United States is not a traditional rugby power-house by any means but a good effort in this tournament at home would give them confidence going into the other opportunities to qualify for the Olympics.

The tournament works a little bit like the soccer World Cup. It begins with a round-robin group stage composed of groups of four teams each. Teams play three games in the group stage, one against each of the others in their group, and receive three points for a win, two for a tie, and one for just showing up. At the end of the group stage, the top two teams advance to the next round. The next round begins with eight teams that play single elimination games. Then there are four and finally two left who play for the championship. In this tournament, the groups are as follows:

Group A: New Zealand, Fiji, Wales, Samoa
Group B: England, Kenya, Argentina, Canada
Group C: South Africa, USA, Portugal, Japan
Group D: Scotland, Australia, France, Brazil

If you want to follow the United States team, they’ll be playing Japan at 7:22 p.m. ET and Portugal at 10:18 p.m. ET on Friday, February 13 on Universal Sports and South Africa at 3:40 p.m. ET on Saturday, February 14 on NBC. The elimination rounds will also be televised and hopefully the USA will be playing in them. NBC has coverage on Sunday, February 15 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. ET when NBC Sports Network takes over.

Who are the characters?

Carlin Isles — Isles is the star of the USA men’s Eagles Seven. He’s also representative of how the United States hopes to become a power in this sport — by stealing athletes from other sports. Isles was primarily a sprinter until just a few years ago when he gave up his dream (and a very reasonable dream, it was) of qualifying for the Olympics as a sprinter. Instead, he got interested in rugby and quickly became an extraordinary member of the USA team. With the inclusion of the sport into the 2016 Olympics, he may get his shot after all, just in a different sport than he expected. Rugby players are fast but virtually none of them are as fast as Isles. Once he gets even an inch of space on the field, it’s hard for anyone to keep up with him and no one is going to catch him.

Here’s a highlight reel of great Carlin Isles plays (it’s got a vaguely NSFW Kanye West music, so be warned). Watch for the shrugs of despair from Isles opponents as he turns the corner on them and they realize he’s just too fast:

Grantland did a short biographical video on Isles that’s also worth working:

The New Zealand All Blacks — I mentioned that New Zealand kind of runs this sport, right? They’ve won almost all the world cups but they’re not in first place this year. They’re called the all blacks because their traditional uniform is, you guessed it, all black, and has been since 1905. In addition to being famous for winning, they’re also famous for performing a Maori Haka dance before each match. Here’s a video of them performing it in the rain before a game last year… shirtless:

Who’s going to win?

Oh, who knows. Probably New Zealand. Maybe South Africa or Australia or Fiji. Possibly France. Or, you know what? How about the United States? Let’s do it!!

What happened on Wednesday, February 11, 2015?

Chelsea stays ahead: It looked like second place Manchester City might get closer to first place Chelsea yesterday when, through almost 90 minutes of soccer, Chelsea was even with Everton and Manchester City was winning their game 4-1. Chelsea scored right at the end of the game, just seconds after Everton went down to ten men, on a shot that went through about three people’s legs before beating goalie Tim Howard. Chelsea won 1-0 and retains their lead over Manchester City in the standings.
Line: Soccer is brutal sometimes. Imagine playing well against a better team and holding them from scoring for 88 minutes only to lose in the last two?
Penguins explode: Not really, of course, that would be horrible whether we’re talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team or actual penguins. The hockey team bearing that name did explode offensively in their 4-1 win last night over the Detroit Red Wings.
Line: When the Penguins are at full strength, watch out!
LeBron and Co. beat the Heat: In LeBron James’ second game against the team he played on for the last few years, the Miami Heat, he got his first victory. The Heat were without Dwayne Wade, who sat out the game with an injury, and they simply couldn’t score enough to stay with the Cavaliers who beat them 113-93.
Line: After the Heat won the first matchup, it makes sense that this one would mean more to LeBron and the Cavaliers than to the Heat.
Tiger Woods says the obvious: Tiger Woods has not been playing golf very well lately. In his last two tournaments, he shot his worst round of golf ever (professionally, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he played better as a kid) and then had to pull out of a tournament with a back injury. Yesterday he announced he wouldn’t come back until he felt he could play better and more safely. Which is pretty much the same thing as saying, “I will come back when I can compete.” Which is obvious. Still, this was big news.
Line: You won’t come back until you can come back? Got it.

Sports Forecast for Thursday, February 12, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

NHL Hockey – St. Louis Blues at Tampa Bay Lightning, 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Chicago Bulls at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Skiing – Alpine World Championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado, 4 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Tuesday, February 10, 2015?

A high scoring, exciting soccer game: That’s right, I know soccer has a reputation for being a little bit dull and low scoring. Not true! At least, not true in yesterday’s game between Tottenham and Liverpool. The game went back and forth and back and forth until Liverpool finally won it 3-2 thanks to a late Mario Balotelli goal. The game was extremely important to the English Premier League standings. Liverpool climbs to seventh place, only one point behind Tottenham.
Line: I wish all the soccer deniers could have watched that game!
Power Plight: A power play in hockey is when one team, because of a foul committed by the other team, has one or more than one more players on the rink than their opponents. It’s a big opportunity to score a goal, which is why it is all the more depressing for the team with the extra player when they let in a goal. That happened twice last night to the Boston Bruins during their 5-3 loss to the Dallas Stars.
Line: Terrible night for the Bruins on the power play.
Harden, James Harden: When you look at the box score of a basketball game, one of the things it shows you quickly is who, from each team, had the most points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. When you look at the box score for last night’s game between the Houston Rockets and Phoenix Suns, the only name you see on the Rockets side is James Harden. He led his team with 40 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists, and three steals, and tied for team lead with two of his teammates who each had one block. That’s quite a game from him as the Rockets beat the Suns 127-118.
Line: There’s a reason that people are talking about James Harden for Most Valuable Player (MVP) this year.

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

British Premier League Soccer – Everton at Chelsea, 2:45 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NHL Hockey – Detroit Red Wings at Pittsburgh Penguins, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NBA Basketball – Miami Heat at Cleveland Cavaliers at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Clippers at 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Monday, February 9, 2015?

The real number one: Women’s college basketball experienced a rare meeting of the top ranked team in the country and the number two ranked team last night as South Carolina met the University of Connecticut on the basketball court. UConn is the traditional power of women’s college basketball and they flexed their muscles, beating South Carolina easily, 87-62.
Line: UConn always seems like a safe bet, no matter who they are playing.
Mike Smith, generic sounding hero: I’ve always thought that Mike Smith, the goalie for the Arizona Coyotes would get more recognition if his name was something slightly less generic. Last night, he survived a crazy sequence at the end of regulation to help his team beat the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2 in a shootout win.
Line: Did you SEE that Mike Smith save?
Sport of attrition: People often complain that the National Basketball Association season is too long; that it should be cut from 82 games to 72 or 64 or something. One argument against that is that playing 82 games poses a specific challenge to basketball teams that might not exist in a shorter season — can they stay healthy? The game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks was a case in point last night. The teams came into the game missing key players — Blake Griffin on the Clippers and Rajon Rondo on the Mavericks, and then the Mavericks lost two more, Monta Ellis and Tyson Chandler in the first five minutes of the game. The Clippers won, 115-98.
Line: Part of the game is finding a way to stay healthy.

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

British Premier League Soccer – Tottenham at Liverpool, 3 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NHL Hockey – Dallas Stars at Boston Bruins, 7 p.m. ET on regional cable.
NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Phoenix Suns at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.
And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

Was Deflategate NFL misdirection?

Remember Deflategate? The scandal that rocked the National Football League (NFL) world for the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl? Just hours after the ACF Conference Championship game (one of the NFL’s two semifinals) word started to spread on Twitter that league authorities were going to be investigating the Patriots for illicitly manipulating their set of footballs to gain a competitive advantage. For the next two weeks, we learned more about the NFL’s process for providing, handling, and manipulating the footballs that each team uses when they play offense than we ever thought necessary. We heard from physicists and statisticians. Billions of words were spoken and written about this story — how serious of an offense was it? how should it be penalized? how does it change the legacy of the Patriots as a team and franchise? of coach Bill Belichick? of quarterback Tom Brady? Then, finally, on the day of the Super Bowl, news came out from NFL sources, that of the 12 balls the Patriots provided and used, 10 were inflated only slightly under the permitted lower limit and only one was significantly under-inflated. This was an almost complete reversal from what we thought we had known for the previous thirteen days, which was that 11 of the 12 balls were significantly under-inflated. Of course, now that the Super Bowl is over, most people have moved on from this controversy. It’s left me wondering though: how much was Deflategate NFL misdirection? Is it possible that the NFL used this half-scandal the way a magician would use a harmless explosion — to distract from more important and revealing subjects?

It’s not an argument that Cyd Ziegler of Outsports makes about the apparent black-balling of gay football player Michael Sam, but he easily could. Instead, Ziegler makes a determined, unrelenting, well-researched, and ultimately convincing case that Michael Sam has been denied an equitable chance to play in the NFL because of his sexual orientation. Read the article, read the article, but even if you don’t, read Ziegler’s conclusion:

The answer to the question I’ve posed to so many – Why is Michael Sam not with an NFL team? – is also likely the most obvious one: because he’s openly gay. Defensive ends with the same size and the same speed – yet with less production in college and the NFL preseason – are in the NFL and Sam is not because he’s gay and he just won’t stop being gay.

The question I would like to pose to NFL executives is this. Knowing that you were distinctly vulnerable to criticism on big social issues like providing employment opportunity free of discrimination to people of all sexual orientations and your season-long struggle to come up with and stick to a coherent policy on domestic abuse, did you gleefully glom onto a much less meaningful controversy about deflated footballs and keep fueling it through the two-week period before the Super Bowl that is often used as a referendum on the stories of the season and the state of the NFL? If you knew that only one of the 11 under-inflated footballs was more than marginally below the permitted range, which you must have known when you tested them at halftime of the game, why did you only correct the story that all 11 we’re significantly under-inflated on the day of the Super Bowl?

I’m simultaneously interested in figuring out if the NFL chose to use Deflategate as misdirection so people would not be thinking or writing about more serious topics leading up to the Super Bowl and also happy that people like Cyd ZIegler are focused on what is important.

Sports Forecast for Monday, February 9, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

Skiing – Alpine World Championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado, 4 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NHL Hockey – Arizona Coyotes at Chicago Blackhawks, 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
NBA Basketball – Los Angeles Clippers at Dallas Mavericks at 8:30 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
NCAA Basketball – Iowa State at Oklahoma, 9 p.m. ET, on ESPN.
And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Sunday, February 8, 2015?

Rivalries, new and old: The NHL scheduled their nationally televised games yesterday in a way that reflects the nature and status of the sport. Hockey is blessed to have some great and very old rivalries that continue today with as much fervor as they did decades ago. The Boston Bruins vs. the Montreal Canadiens is one of those. The sport also has the ability, because of its physicality, I think, to develop new rivalries between good teams. The Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues may be on their way to developing a new rivalry. Yesterday, both sets of teams played. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins 3-1 and the Chicago Blackhawks beat the St. Louis Blues 4-2.
Line: There’s no rivalry like Boston, Montreal, but Chicago and St. Louis have potential.
Change the playoffs, exhibit L: This past week, the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA), Adam Silver, came out in favor of the idea of letting (basically) the sixteen best teams into the playoffs instead of the top eight in the Western Conference and the top eight in the Eastern Conference. The game yesterday between the Toronto Raptors (East) and San Antonio Spurs (West) was just one of many reasons why. After an 87-82 victory over the Spurs, the Raptors are in second place in the East with a 35-17 record. The Spurs, with an almost equivalent, 32-19 record, are in seventh place in the West!
Line: And that’s why it may be time to change how playoff qualification is done!
Home cooking good for the USA: The USA Men’s National Soccer team had not won a game since their thrilling victory over Ghana way back last summer during the World Cup. Since the World Cup, they had lost or tied five games in a row until yesterday when they beat Peru 2-0 in Los Angeles. Probably no one should be happier about the win than coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who was getting some seriously heated criticism from fans and media members for the team’s lackluster play.
Line: USA! USA! FINALLY!