Following Sports Archives - Page 68 of 79

Why Major League Soccer is like a New York co-op

Jermaine Jones was assigned to sign with the New England Revolution

Recently Major League Soccer, the top professional soccer league in the United States did something which raised eye-brows and exposed one of its oddest elements, its organizational structure. If you remember anyone from the United States Men’s World Cup team from earlier in the summer, it’s probably goalie Tim Howard. But if you remember anyone else it might be Jermaine Jones the dreadlocked maelstrom of a midfielder who was probably the best non-goalie on the team for the duration of the tournament. Jones is one of our many German-American players. He grew up in the United States but moved to Germany as an adolescent and began his professional career there as a fourteen year old (which is not rare for German players). He’s spent his entire career in Germany and Turkey but became interested in playing and perhaps finishing his career in the United States. And that’s where the weirdness began.

Major League Soccer has a “single entity-structure” in which, according to Wikipedia, “teams and player contracts are centrally owned by the league.” Most other leagues in the United States are connected, but much more loosely, like a neighborhood association connects property owners throughout the country. Instead of operating independently on the important things and in unison when necessary, Major League Soccer operates independently until the decisions become important. This type of structure is familiar to me only from living in a co-op apartment building where I am a “tenant-owner” the same way that Robert Kraft (who owns-owns the New England Patriots football team) is an investor-operator. Through this peculiar organization, the signing of Jones became an assigning.

The MLS team most interested in Jones was the Chicago Fire and had been pursuing him for months. According to MLS rules, most players are able to negotiate and sign with teams of their choosing if they are free agents. Players who fit this description, as a “U.S. National Team player who signs with MLS after playing abroad” however, have to go through an “allocation order” where teams that did worse in the previous year have first dibs until they sign a player that fits that description. Then they drop to the bottom of the list. Okay, that’s a little arbitrary, but I can see what they’re going for there. But what is this? There’s an asterisk?

*Designated Players of a certain threshold – as determined by the League – are not subject to allocation ranking.

That, my friends, is an elastic clause if I’ve ever seen one. So, in some cases, the league can just bypass the rules and do whatever it likes. In this case, MLS decided to have Jones skip the allocation process and they decided to choose between the two teams interested in him with a coin-flip! The two teams were the Chicago Fire and the New England Revolution (it boggles the mind to believe that these were the only two teams who wanted him, but…) and the Revolution won the coin flip.

Not only does this feel anti-competitive and arbitrary, but as Barry Petchesky argues in his Deadspin.com article about the assignment, it’s “shockingly anti-labor. If MLS wants to be the league of choice for the world’s best players, it’d better start allowing those players to choose their situations.” I couldn’t agree more. The worst thing a sports league can do is create the appearance of favoring one team over another or one player over another from an organizational standpoint. The NBA lives and flourishes with a little bit of this sentiment thanks to conspiracy theorists who think the draft lotteries are fixed or the refs are instructed to favor big-market teams. Too much of it can only lead to bad things, like the UFC’s recent issue with President Dana White’s removal of a judge mid-fight. The perception of true competition is essential for the enjoyment of sports.

Cue Cards 8-27-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Yesterday — Tuesday, August 26

Almost Perfect — A very rare and exciting thing in Baseball is a “Perfect Game.” This is when a pitcher pitches the entire game without allowing a single person from the other team to get to first base. Not even who! San Francisco Giants’ pitcher Madison Bumgarner had a perfect game through seven innings but allowed a hit in the eighth. No one else got on base though and that runner did not score. It was still an impressive and notable performance by Bumgarner.
Strong Little Fifteen — The U.S. Open’s opening round was enlivened yesterday when fifteen year-old CiCi Bellis from California beat the tenth ranked player in the world, Dominika Cibulkova. When told after the game that she was trending on twitter, Bellis said, “I know some of my friends were doing hashtag like ‘takedowncibulkova,’ something like that,” she said. “I know three of my friends did that.”
Sports as Soap Opera — Two interesting non-game-based sports stories developed further yesterday. One is heartening — Michael Sam, the first openly gay professional football player, made it through the first round of cuts on his team. Still, his team has to go from 75 players to 53 by this Sunday, so we’ll have another week of watching this story before things are settled. The other story is bizarre — a couple days ago, USC football player John Shaw hurtled into the news when he explained to his team that he had sprained both his ankles badly by jumping from a balcony onto concrete to save his nephew from drowning in a pool. As the story became big news, it also became… suspect. Now the story is that USC has started to back away slowly with its hands held up, gesturing to the world that they don’t know what happened and aren’t fully supporting Shaw until they know more.

Six Months Later the False Sochi Media Narratives Continue

I had the great luck of being able to attend the Winter Olympics games in Russia this past year. I blogged about it extensively which you can see here if you care to browse. In one of my final posts on the subject, after I had returned to the United States, I wrote about how I felt the media had done a disservice to the Olympics and to Russia by pushing the narrative of how messed up things were way too far. Here’s what I wrote:

I’m disappointed in how the Western media portrayed Sochi in the lead up to the games. Before I went, I was concerned and scared from what I had been reading. The hotels were unfinished, radioactive shitholes. There were suicide bombers on every block and even if the Russian Army were somehow able to deter or demolish them, the people living in the area would be overwhelmingly resentful because of having been forced to live under martial law for months before the Olympics even began. Oh, and any food in the area would have been in storage for at least three months because that was the last time any shipments of anything were allowed into the area.

With the possible exception of terrorism, this simply wasn’t true. None of it.

Six months after the Olympics, the disappointing narrative continues. Gizmodo.com reblogged a photo essay by Russian photographer Alexander Belenkiy under the headline, “Just Six Months After the Olympics, Sochi Looks Like a Ghost Town.” This is misleading at best and intentionally, journalistically yellow at worst. Now, I will admit to not speaking Russian. So, when I look at Belenkiy’s photo essay, I have to rely on a combination of just the photos, my memories of the Olympics, and Google translate. Google translate does its best, but… well, lemme just quote the opening paragraph accompanying the photos:

Just six months ago, at the Olympic stadium cried chubby teddy bear. He did not fall, as his ancestor from the eighties, but also among us can not see it. Hiding in the woods?

Setting humor aside for a minute, here’s what angers me about this coverage. All those photos are of Krasnaya Polyana not Sochi. Krasnaya Polyana was where the alpine and cross country skiing events and the sliding events were held. The Russians ambitiously developed an almost completely brand ski resort town up in the mountains to host these events. Their hope was that, in time, this resort would become a national and international ski destination, pulling some of the business away from Europe’s alp resorts. Whether or not that comes to pass, I can’t say I’m surprised to see it virtually abandoned in August! Compare the mountains in Belenkiy’s photos with what the mountains looked like in February. Here’s one of my photos from the Olympic games:

Olympic Mountains — When the snows return, my guess is that the people will too.

Send some photographers to Jersey shore towns in January and see what they look like or even Colorado mountain towns in Summer. Meanwhile, back to Sochi. Sochi is a coastal city that, although it was the city name used as the host of the Olympics, didn’t actually have any events in it. None of these photos are of Sochi at all! Sochi is a bustling small city of over 300,000 people. I promise it’s not abandoned today!

Cue Cards 8-26-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Yesterday — Monday, August 25

Traditional Hegemony Trickling Back in Baseball? One of the unique and refreshing things about this season in Major League Baseball is that most of the traditional powers have been struggling and some teams that have been very bad for decades have been doing well. The two extreme examples have been the New York Yankees who are the winningest team ever but have not been good this year and the Kansas City Royals who have been one of the sorriest teams for the past thirty years but are doing great this season. Yesterday the two played each other and the Yankees won 8-1. This was their fifth win in a row and makes me wonder/worry if there’s enough time left in the incredibly long baseball season for things to turn back around.
The U.S. Open Begins — Big tennis tournaments usually start pretty quietly. There’s enough predictability in tennis and the tournaments are big enough that the first few rounds are usually pretty easy for the big names who get to play much less well known names. The most common story (until there is an upset) will be how some well-known player almost lost or, when that’s not possible, how the well-known player had to try harder than expected. In day one, Andy Murray had to try harder than expected against Robin Haase and Venus Williams had to try harder than expected against Kimiko Date-Krumm and an annoying bumble bee.
Rematch of British Titans — Last year’s English Premier League Champions, Manchester City, and Runners-Up, Liverpool, played yesterday afternoon. This might explains some funny furtive departures from the office in mid-afternoon and then more funny returns smelling slightly like ale. The defending champions trounced Liverpool 3-1 and from watching part of this game, I can tell you that it wasn’t even that close. Manchester City dominated almost as much as Germany did Brazil way back a few months ago. The English Premier League is fun to watch but mostly makes me miss the World Cup.

Cue Cards: 8-25-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Yesterday — Sunday, August 24

Sam Bradford’s Knee — St. Louis Rams Quarterback Sam Bradford tore his ACL and will miss the entire upcoming National Football League season. Bradford was the last quarterback drafted under the previous collective bargaining agreement when rookies made way more money than they do now, so, as upsetting as it is to lose your team’s starting quarterback before the season even starts for Rams fans, at least this means the team will definitely move on to a more affordable quarterback option next year.
Angels beat the Athletics — It’s rare that the two best teams in any sport are in the same division. In baseball right now, the two teams with the best records are not only in the same division but in the same state. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (or whatever they’re actually called these days) beat the Oakland Athletics last night 9-4 to move into first place. Of all the major league sports, baseball has the fewest playoff teams, so this jockeying for position really does matter.
Sunderland ties Manchester United — The most famous team in the world, Manchester United, has a new manager this year, the way-out-there Dutch Louis Van Gaal. In two games so far this season, they still haven’t won with him at the helm. Yesterday they drew with the decidedly mediocre Sunderland. Let’s all just wait quietly for the Van Gaalian eruption to happen.

What the Reaction to Paul George's Leg Injury Means

During a televised intra-squad scrimmage of the U.S. Men’s National Basketball team in their preparation for the upcoming World Cup of Basketball, Paul George, a star basketball player, broke his leg. The word used most frequently to describe the injury seems to be “horrific.” It was an open fracture of the tibia and fibula. Almost as soon as George had been carted off the court and the rest of the scrimmage canceled, the predominant story among the media became variations on the question, “What will Paul George’s leg injury mean for the future participation of NBA players in international competitions?” The thought running through my mind has been, “What does the reaction to Paul George’s leg injury mean? Why is this the media’s reaction? What can we learn from it?

NBA: Indiana Pacers at Charlotte Bobcats — Is the story of Paul George’s injury about his career or the Indiana Pacers?

The implication of the Paul George story that’s been percolating is this: now that a star player has been injured in a national team activity, NBA players should stop taking part in international competition. Who does this make sense for? There’s three main actors in this power play. There’s the NBA owners who employ the players. There’s the players. And then there’s the fans. Not to get all political science on you here, but they nicely represent Capital, Labor, and Consumer. Let’s go through this one at a time:

The Fans

Fans of the Indiana Pacers, the team that Paul George plays for in the NBA, are upset today. They just watched the best player on a team, someone who they’ve grown fond of after watching him play since he was twenty years old, snap his leg on national television. George will probably be okay, the surgery is said to have been successful but it’s not clear how okay the Pacers will be. They’ve been the second best team for two years running in the Eastern Conference, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll even be that good when George comes back in a year. Their second best player, David West, is in the final third of his career and may not be as good then. They lost their third best player, Lance Stephenson, in free agency, and their fourth best player, Roy Hibbert, is a riddle wrapped up in a seven foot enigma.

All that said, it’s hard to argue that the fans as a whole lose from international play. Basketball fans love basketball and international basketball is wonderful to follow and to watch. Furthermore, if you’re a fan of one of the other fourteen teams in the Eastern Conference… well, you’re not crowing about it but your team’s path to the finals just got a little easier. As a consumer of basketball, international play is a net win for you, a fact even the most depressed Indiana Pacers fan would admit if you stuck her with truth serum.

The Players

Paul George certainly lost out in this particular case. His leg is broken and he won’t be able to play basketball for another year. The players as a group, however, only gain by playing internationally — with a few exceptions. The first thing to understand about this is that contracts in the NBA, unlike those in the NFL, are guaranteed. George’s contract, which begins this year, runs for five years and $91.5 million dollars. His injury does nothing to affect that. Of the other players playing in that scrimmage, only one of them is slated to become a free agent in the next twelve months. Basketball players, even during the offseason, play basketball. It’s just what they do. They may take some vacation but most of the time during the offseason, they’re in gyms, playing high intensity basketball against the best players in the world. This injury could have happened in any practice at any time and the consequences physically and financially would have been the same. Playing in international competitions doesn’t increase the risk of injury for most players and it has great potential value in the form of professional development and exposure for sponsorship or endorsement deals.

The one major exception to this are players who, for whatever reason, feel or are compelled to play in these competitions, even if they are injured. Yao Ming, the Chinese great, forced his 7’6″ body up and down the court every summer for China and it almost definitely shortened his career and lowered his earnings in the long run. The solution to this isn’t to get pros out of these competitions, it’s for countries not to force their players to play.

One last point about the players. The likely alternative to having professionals play in these competitions would be to have amateurs, mostly college kids to play. The cost-benefit for them is significantly worse than for the professionals. College athletes don’t have guaranteed contracts. In fact, they’re not “paid” at all. If a college athlete broke his leg like George did, he might never get drafted, never make a fortune, never have a dream career. Let’s not have the grownups vacate something not-so-risky so that kids can take it up even though it’s more risky for them.

The NBA Owners

NBA owners don’t make any money directly from international competitions. It’s probably worth writing that again. NBA owner don’t make any money directly from international competitions. The downside of their players playing is exactly what happened on Friday. The Pacers owner is likely to make tens of million dollars fewer this year without Paul George than he would have with him playing. The upside? It’s hard to measure. Professionals playing in international competition definitely attracts new fans to basketball who then become fans of the NBA. Players who come through uninjured often benefit from the experience and become more valuable employees.

That’s why the story of this injury quickly became “Will this mean that NBA players no longer are going to play in international competition?” It’s because team owners, who employ the players, don’t want their players to play in international competition. At least they don’t want the players to play (to be allowed to play if we tell the truth about it,) without the owners getting paid.

As fans, I don’t think we should take the owners side on this one. I love watching international sports with the best players in the world competing against each other and it’s really not a bad deal for the players, not even for Paul George, truth be told. So resist the urge to take up the owners side on this issue!

Celebrating Women in the NBA

Two stories popped up recently about women in the NBA that are worth knowing about. The women in the spotlight are Becky Hammon and Violet Palmer. Both were successful point guards during their playing days and both have become pioneers for women in men’s professional basketball.

Violet Palmer

_MG_2587 — Violet Palmer, trailblazing NBA ref

The first story was mercifully underplayed because it’s really no big deal. Violet Palmer, who became the first female NBA ref in 1997, married her long-time partner, Tanya Stine. Palmer said in an interview that although she came out as gay to her fellow refs in 2007, this is her “big formal coming out.” Palmer has been a trailblazer for women in an arena inexplicably dominated by men. ESPNW covered this exhaustively in 2011 and unfortunately not much has changed since Jane McManus wrote this:

No women call NFL, Major League Baseball or NHL games. The NBA has one female official, Violet Palmer. The elite levels of professional and Olympic soccer are opening their doors to women, with the majority of the opportunities coming in the women’s game.

Being a ref is a tough job for anyone. A common cliché about refs, which I think is pretty true, is that the best refs are the least noticed ones. This is because fans usually only remark on a ref when they feel he or she has made a bad call. Violet Palmer has done it for seventeen years and has been thoroughly unremarkable for all the best reasons. Women, gay people, and all lovers of equality should be proud of her.

Becky Hammon

Becky Hammon has had an interesting career. Despite having been a star at her college, Colorado State University, she was not drafted by any WNBA team. Instead, she was signed as a free-agent by the New York Liberty where she became a solid player. That was 1999. Since then, she’s played professional basketball in one league or another for the past 15 years. She became mildly notorious in 2008 when, frustrated by not being invited to join the U.S. Olympic program, she became a naturalized Russian citizen and joined their team. This is slightly less crazy than it might seem at first. Like in some other women’s sports, while the most competitive league in the world may be in the United States, the salaries are significantly higher elsewhere. Many women who play in the United States also play professionally elsewhere for part of the year. Russia was a common destination for many top female players during the late 2000s. If you’re curious about the lifestyle, I dug up a great article from a few years back by Jim Caple that profiles a few top American players in Russia. For the past seven years she’s played point guard for the San Antonio Silver Stars.

Yesterday news broke that she was retiring from the WNBA to become Assistant Coach for the San Antonio Spurs, the men’s professional basketball team in San Antonio and reigning NBA Champions. Any major hire that the Spurs make would make news but this made big news because Hammon will be the first female Assistant Coach in NBA history. Hammon is already familiar with the Spurs and they are familiar with her. While rehabbing a major knee injury last year, she spent a lot of time at Spurs practices with the blessing and mentorship of long-time Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. According to Andrew Keh in this New York Times article, Hammon called that time an “internship.” She must have impressed because Popovich not only hired her but covered her with praise (effusive praise for the normally taciturn Popovich,) saying that he is “confident her basketball I.Q., work ethic and interpersonal skills will be a great benefit to the Spurs.”

The best part of this is that just because the Spurs did this, the rest of the league is waking up this morning not only respecting Hammon’s hiring but frankly scared of it. The Spurs have done such a wonderful job over the past twenty years and have developed such a reputation for finding talent where other teams miss it that I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the WNBA ranks were thoroughly scoured for other coaching talent in the next year. That’s a good thing.

Football is Coming

Football is coming. As inevitable as winter in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series, college and NFL football is rapidly approaching and when it does, it’s going to wipe every other topic in sports off the landscape. Already it’s beginning to dominate. The first two stories of my favorite show in the genre of sports guys yelling at each other, Pardon the Interruption, were about NFL football. Four of ESPN’s top eleven stories right now are about football. At si.com it’s seven of fifteen. Fantasy football preview magazines fill the newsstands as passionate owners begin their preparation for the upcoming season. If you don’t believe me, there’s even a website, howmanydaystillfootball.com that just lists how many days till football there are. Football is coming.

Football is coming and I have mixed feelings about it. I love football. It’s not a sport I grew up with but it’s become one of my favorite to watch. I once answered a friend who asked, “Why Do People Like Football?” and I listed a bunch of reasons. Among them were the fascinating tactics, the obscure technicalities that are so much fun to argue about, the crazy athleticism of its players, and even the violence. I also listed “fantasy football” and “sitting on the couch” in the list. Here’s what I had to say about them:

Fantasy Football — A subset of gambling, fantasy football has taken off in the last five years in a crazy way. Around twenty million people now play fantasy football, there’s a half hour television show on ESPN dedicated to fantasy football owners and our own blog has already had a fantasy football post!
Sitting on the Couch — There’s really nothing better than sitting down on the couch on Sunday knowing that you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything for the rest of the day. The mid-afternoon football induced slumber is also a glorious feature of the sport.

It’s these two factors that I feel the most divided about. It’s not that I don’t love playing fantasy. I do. I’m even messing around with my own idea of an innovative new fantasy game, but more on that another time. And you know I like sitting on the couch. I’m doing it right now! It’s just that I don’t love the extent of the power football has over me. I enjoy watching other sports. The recent World Cup was so much fun and it didn’t dominate my life the way the NFL can. I enjoy reading and seeing friends and family outside of the context of sports. I’ve been enjoying listening to non-sports podcasts on my commute, like This American Life, Risk!, and Ask Me Another. I like traveling on weekends without fighting off the urge (or giving in, more likely) to compulsively check my phone. Most of all, I like having my brain free from thinking about how to win at fantasy football so it can think about what moves to make next in my career or how to be a good friend, partner, brother, son, and grandson.

So this year, when football swarms over the landscape like the zombie populated winter storm in Game of Thrones, I’m going to weather it more gracefully than before. Maybe I’ll plan a few weekends of travel now so I lock myself into not watching every weekend. Maybe I’ll do a better job picking and choosing only the games I think are legitimately interesting each week to watch. Maybe I’ll go out more to watch with friends instead of hiding in my living room. Football is coming and I can’t wait, I just want to find a way to savor it without letting it sabotage me.

Understanding Tour de France TV Graphics – Department Numbers

Dear Sports Fan,

While watching LIVE broadcast from Tour de France, from time to time there is a note with the name of place, city where particular racers are. And there is always a number in brackets. And I’m wondering, what does that number mean?

Best Regards,
Michal

Tour de France Number — What does the 88 mean?

— — —

Dear Michal,

Thanks so much for your question and for sending a screenshot of the TV graphic you’re asking about. I had no idea what those numbers are but this morning, I woke up and searched around on the internet for a while and I think I’ve figured it out.

The number in brackets next to the name of the town the Tour de France riders are racing through is the department of France the town is in. For example, in the image here, the riders are traveling through Saint-Etienne-les-Remiremont. Saint-Etienne-les-Remiremont is a small commune or township in France which is 70% covered by forest and has around 1,500 households in it. It sounds like a very nice place except for the periodic tragic floods it withstands due to being at the base of a water-system from a glacial lake in the mountains above it. The town was first settled in 870 by a monastery of women. Most importantly to our discussion though is that it is within the Vosges department.

A department is one of the tiered level of regional government in France: regions, departments, and communes in order of size. The history of the department is fascinating. It was created during the French Revolution and was intended to be a rational way of dividing the country. Each of the 83 (there are now 96) departments was designed so that its farthest inhabitants would still only be a day’s trip on horseback from the capital of the department and its borders were intentionally drawn across traditional boundaries to break up older political identities. The departments were named after geographic features instead of ethnic or political ones. A pessimist would say that this was because the leaders of the French revolution had recently seen just how vulnerable a government can be if it can’t control its people but an optimist would reply back that a certain amount of central control and assimilation is necessary to establish the identity of any nation.

Of course, at this point, all we’re trying to do is enjoy watching the Tour de France on television! Today’s stage 20 will travel through the department of Dordogne [24,] so watch out for the number 24 as you go! If you want to know more about Dordogne or almost any department of France, you can go to its website which is usually www.cg[department number].fr. Dordogne’s is www.cg24.fr.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of the Tour,
Ezra Fischer

Dear Sports Fan Joins Fancred

Today, I’m happy to announce that Dear Sports Fan has been invited to join Fancred!

Fancred is the world’s fastest growing sports social network. Being a verified account there means Dear Sports Fan will be one of the publications suggested to new users to follow when they join. I joined Fancred myself during the World Cup and have absolutely loved it so far. I’m looking forward to engaging with the Fancred community even more over the coming months.

Welcome Fancred people!

Dear Sports Fan provides accessible explanations of fundamental elements of sports, like “What is Being Offside,” that mainstream sports media assume their readers already understand. We arm our readers to engage in small talk about sports with the Cue Card recaps of yesterday’s top sporting events and to take part in deeper conversations about trending sport stories through posts like “Plot in Football: A Case Study.” Essays that explore the cultural context of sports, like “Sports and the Star Spangled Banner,” and some of its more bewildering aspects, like “Can You Help Me Understand the Playoff Beard,” offer light-hearted, analytical, and nonthreatening avenues for curious readers to approach sports.

Although the match between content created for non-sports fans and the world’s fastest growing sports social network may seem unconventional, we sports fans universally have people in our lives who don’t share our love for sports. Dear Sports Fan posts are safe to share with your boyfriend, girlfriend, moms, dads, siblings, cousins, and aunts! I’ve also found that some people who enjoy Dear Sports Fan the most are themselves sports fans. They enjoy our writing for its simple explanations of complicated concepts in sports they know less well, or our summaries of what’s happening in sports that don’t assume a whole lot of existing knowledge. After all, it can be hard to keep track of it all, from the changing distinction between a block and a charge to the current state of the Tour de France.

Whatever your reason for coming to Dear Sports Fan, I hope you enjoy it! Take you shoes off, put your feet up, and stay a while. If you’d like to ask a question or send me some feedback, you can email me at dearsportsfan@gmail.com or hit me up at Fancred!

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer