How to Watch the World Cup: USA vs Germany

To celebrate and prepare for the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup WorkWhy Do Soccer Players Dive so MuchWhat is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer? and Why do World Cup Soccer Players Blame the Ball? The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13.

Jermaine Jones
Jermaine Jones is and has been awesome in the World Cup

With dread. At least that’s how I’m going to watch the third and potentially final game of the World Cup for the United States team. Here’s a quick recap of the tournament so far.

  • The United States got a little unlucky and ended up stuck with three strong teams, Germany, Portugal, and Ghana in the so-called “Group of Death.” BAD
  • The United States beat Ghana 2-1 even though Ghana outplayed them. GOOD
  • Germany clobbered Portugal and then tied Ghana, leaving the United States with the opportunity to clinch a place in the next round of the tournament if they could beat Portugal. GOOD
  • The United States was clearly the better team in their game against Portugal and had a 2-1 lead after ninety four minutes of play. GOOD
  • There was one more minute in the game. UH OH
  • Portugal scored. AGHHGH!!!!
  • Wait, hold up, the United States still has a great chance to move on to the next round. All they need to do is win or tie their game against Germany or lose but have the Ghana vs. Portugal work out in some very reasonable ways. NOT SO BAD

So, after two weeks of exciting play in what has been by far the most entertaining World Cup in my memory, this is where we are. And… it’s just all going to go horribly wrong from here on out, I can feel it in my bones. One of the reasons I write this blog is to try to explain to non-sports-infected people what it’s like to be a fan. Sean McIndoe of Grantland did a great piece last year called “The 20 Types of Depressed Sports Fans” and I always tend to be number 9, The Pessimist:

Long before it becomes clear that the game is going south, this fan will annoy everyone by coming up with increasingly negative scenarios that he insists are about to unfold. Eventually, his lamentations become a source of constant background noise, like a dripping faucet.

I’m also a devotee of the “reverse jinx” philosophy which suggests that you can use your natural “dripping faucet lamentations” to literally affect the course of an upcoming game if you state them loudly and often before the game. Without further ado, here are my lamentations in advance of the United States game vs. Germany:

  • Many are suggesting that there will be some unspoken collusion between Germany and the United States to tie the game because if they tie, they are both guaranteed a spot in the next round with Germany in first place and the United States in second. This isn’t going to happen. There is a pretty big difference between first and second in the group because the second place team will probably play Belgium while the winner of the group will play Algeria, Russia, or Korea, all of which are likely to be much easier to beat than the surprisingly mighty Belgians. Germany is going to try to win.
  • If Germany tries to win, they are likely to win. They’re ranked second in the world by FIFA and they have played excellently so far. They’ve also had an extra day of rest compared to the United States and they didn’t just play in the rain-forest of Manaus, where the U.S. vs Portugal game was. All four teams who have played in Manaus went on to lose their next game. It’s that brutal of a place to play.
  • This “Manaus Effect,” said by soccerblog.dallasnews.com to be “as deadly as skinny dipping in the Amazon,” has negative consequences beyond our game with Germany. If we lose to Germany, our best bet for advancing to the next round anyway is for Portugal to beat or tie Ghana. Unfortunately, Portugal will also be suffering from having played just four days before in an 84 degree, 70 percent humidity sauna.
  • Now we get to the really superstitious part of this. Here are the results of the U.S. national team in World Cups since 1990 when they qualified for the first time since 1950 and when I first started following them:
    • 1990 — lost all three games.
    • 1994 — Lost 1-0 to Brazil in the knock-out round. Not bad.
    • 1998 — lost all three games, including one 2-0 to Germany. Ouch.
    • 2002 — made it all the way to the quarterfinals!!! Lost 1-0 to Germany.
    • 2006 — won their first game, tied their second, (sound familiar?) lost their third game 2-1 to Ghana. Eliminated.
    • 2010 — made it to the knock-out round. Eliminated by Ghana, 2-1.
  • You have to admit, if there’s a scenario that should make U.S. soccer fans bones’ jangle, it’s playing against Germany and facing elimination, if we lose to Germany, by a victory by Ghana.

Because this is a massive reverse jinx powered by true sports-pessimism, I’m not going to point out how wonderful it has been to see American fans turn out with real passion in droves to support the United States team. I’m not going to point out that Nate Silver thinks the U.S. team has a 75.9% chance of advancing. I’m definitely, definitely not going to point out that if the U.S. manages to beat Germany and then beat Algeria, Russia, or South Korea, it would play the winner of France vs. Nigeria in the Quarterfinals on July 4th.

How to Watch the World Cup: USA vs Portugal

To celebrate and prepare for the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup WorkWhy Do Soccer Players Dive so MuchWhat is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer? and Why do World Cup Soccer Players Blame the Ball? The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13.

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US Fans
Some of the sixteen million people who watched the U.S. beat Ghana at the World Cup

After a thrilling victory against Ghana that was watched by over 16 million people in the United States, the US team plays their second game of the 2014 World Cup on Sunday, June 22, at 6:00 pm on ESPN against Portugal. If you were one of those 16 million people or have talked to one of them since the game, you might be interested in tuning in for this game. Here are some things to know and prepare for.

Who Are the United States Players to Watch Out For?

Last week, before the first U.S. game of the World Cup, I wrote about Michael Bradley and claimed he was the best player on the team. Well, he wasn’t against Ghana. In fact, he was kind of bad. Soccer people have been talking about this since then. How Bradley “responds” to this will be one of the big stories of the game. Natural variation in how a player plays from one game to the next is almost always turned into plot by avid sports fans. This is one of those times — either Bradley will “use the criticism as fuel and come back with a great game” or will “continue his run of bad play, prompting questions about what could be wrong with him.” On the other hand, during the past few years statistical analysis has pervaded sports media, so you may also hear the phrase “regression to the mean.” This just means that a good player is more likely to play like a good player after a bad game than he is to continue to play like a bad player.

The other player to watch out for is unknown as of yet. The best American striker (primary attacking player,) Jozy Altitore left the game against Ghana with what looked like a badly injured hamstring. No one is sure what coach Jurgen Klinsmann will do to replace him, not even the always-informed Jason La Canfora of CBS sports. La Canfora asked two former American National Team strikers what they would do and one said he would replace Altidore with Chris Wondolowski (his fans call him “Wondo”) and the other said he would replace him with an extra midfielder and ask Clint Dempsey to play as the only striker. I would rather see the U.S. continue using two strikers, no matter who the replacement is, than try that but unfortunately, I have no say in the matter! Neither do you, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

What’s the Deal with Portugal?

cristiano-ronaldo-520-posing-stance-in-a-free-kick-at-the-euro-2012Portugal lost their first game to Germany 4-0. They looked terrible. They’re also going to be playing without two of their best defenders, Fabio Coentrao who is out with an injury, and Pepe who got a red card for head-butting (he didn’t get his money’s worth, it was really more like nuzzling,) a German. The best player on Portugal’s team, who is also generally considered one of the best two players in the world, is suffering from a knee injury. His name is Cristiano Ronaldo and he is really, really fun to hate. Try it tomorrow! To help you develop some healthy sports hate for him, here is a video compilation of him diving (for comparison’s sake, the other consensus best player in the world is the Argentinian Lionel Messi who inspires YouTube videos that claim he “never dives.”) What’s even more annoying to me is the pose he strikes before taking free kicks. The way he stands there, with his legs wide and his chest puffed out and his always perfectly coiffed hair… just makes me wriggle in annoyance.

What Does This Game Mean in the Standings?

As we explained at greater length in our article, How Does the World Cup Work, the initial stage of the World cup consists of eight groups of four teams each who play each other to determine which two teams move on to the next stage. The group that the U.S. team is in consists of Ghana, Portugal, and Germany, and we play them in that order. Teams get three points for a win and one point for a tie. So far, Germany has a win and a tie (four points,) the United States has a win (three points,) Ghana has a loss and a tie (one point,) and Portugal has only a loss (zero points.) After the U.S. vs Portugal game, there will only be two games left in the group stage: Germany vs. the United States and Portugal vs. Ghana. If the United States wins, they will guarantee themselves a place in the next round because only Germany could exceed six points in the remaining games. If the United States tie, they are still in quite good shape. The worst they could do in that scenario is four points, which is the most that Portugal or Ghana could end up with. Having beaten Ghana and with Portugal having lost miserably to Germany in the first game (the number of times a team gets scored on matters for tie-breaking,) the United States would be likely to make it through. Losing to Portugal is a serious problem though, because then if Portugal beats Ghana, the United States would need to beat Germany to get in — an unlikely outcome.

Was that confusing? It is a little complicated but basically the United States will definitely advance with a win, will probably advance with a tie, and really, really should try not to lose against Portugal because then they might actually have to beat the Germans on Thursday.

So, What’s Going to Happen?

Two missing defenders and an injured (and annoying!) Ronaldo notwithstanding, Portugal is a much more acclaimed team than the United States, and is favored over the United States. When Germany went up 1-0 against Ghana, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of dread about our game against Portugal. The U.S. team has a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and so far, everything was going right for the United States. Germany had destroyed Portugal, Portugal was not going to be playing at full strength, and the United States had (honestly) lucked into a win against Ghana. If the Germans had beaten Ghana, they might not have anything to play for in their final game against the U.S. and would be liable to rest their best players and not try too hard to beat us. Everything was going the United States’ way, so of course, I felt everything would soon go horribly wrong. Then Ghana scored two goals and looked like they might beat the Germans. This was bad for the U.S. but I couldn’t help feel good about it. For one thing, Ghana looking so good against Germany validated the United States needing some luck to beat Ghana in the first place. Mostly though, I think I just felt better (and feel better even after Germany and Ghana tied the game,) that the United States won’t be able to luck their way into advancing. The team will have to earn it, and tomorrow, oddly enough, I think they just might do it. Go, go, USA!

How to Watch the World Cup: USA vs Ghana

To celebrate and prepare for the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup WorkWhy Do Soccer Players Dive so MuchWhat is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer? and Why do World Cup Soccer Players Blame the Ball? The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13.

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The United States Men’s National soccer team plays their first game of the 2014 World Cup on Monday June 16 at 6:00 pm ET against Ghana. It will be televised live from Estadio das Dunas in Natal, Brazil on ESPN. If you are not a normal soccer junkie, this is one of the handful of games over the next four years that you might really enjoy watching. Here’s some suggestions to wring out the most enjoyment possible from it.

USMNTKnow the Stakes:

This is the first game of the World Cup for the United States but the stakes are already extremely high. As we covered in our How Does the World Cup Work? post, the opening two weeks of the tournament are the group stage. This is a round-robin tournament in groups of four teams with only the top two advancing to the knockout round, a single elimination bracket of sixteen teams. The United States got very unlucky and was placed in what is widely being called the “Group of Death” because it collectively has the toughest teams. The United States will play Ghana and then Portugal and then Germany. It’s a rule of thumb that to have a chance of advancing, a team should aim for at least four points (three for a win, one for a tie, zero for a loss.) Of the three teams, Ghana is thought to be the weakest. FIFA (soccer’s unthinkably corrupt governing body) ranks Ghana 37th, Portugal 4th, and Germany 2nd. The United States is 13th. I know it’s only the first game of the tournament for the US team but if they are going to advance, they almost definitely need to win the game against Ghana.

Know the Characters:

Soccer is a beautiful game to watch but even its strongest proponents will admit that for people who are not used to watching it, it can drag at times. One approach is to appreciate soccer through the sheer sex appeal of its players. A complementary approach is to get into the plot of the game. Here are some of the characters:

Clint Dempsey

The captain of the US team, Clint Dempsey is also the heart and soul of the team. He’s a fiery dude whose brash, untraditional style has an air of the avant-garde to it if the avant-garde was as likely to punch you in the face as produce artwork. He also has an appealing Olympic-personal-interest type back-story that confirms American stereotypes about soccer so its bound to get a lot of airplay. Dempsey grew up in a trailer in Nacogdoches, Texas, playing soccer with primarily kids (and adults) of hispanic decent. He cut his teeth playing in adult offshoot of the Mexican professional league when he was a fourteen year-old. According to this great Sports Illustrated article, he would infuriate the adults with his skill and attitude and then had to handle them trying to injure him. He played at Furman University and then the New England Revolution in the US professional league, the MLS, before heading to the English Premiere league where he played for Fulham and later Tottenham. Dempsey became widely known as the best American non-goalie to ever play in the EPL before coming back to the US to play for Seattle last year. He’s 31 now which is a little past prime for a soccer player but he’s still clever and ferocious and capable of creating some magical moments for the US team.

Michael Bradley

If Dempsey is the heart and soul of the team, Michael Bradley is the engine. He plays tirelessly at the center of the field for the US team. He starts the attack by distributing the ball up the field and he’s essential to defense, pressuring the best playmaker on the other team and tackling with precision and strength. If Dempsey’s background and style confirm the stereotype of the fiery latin influence, Bradley confirms the stereotype of the overly intense passion that white America is said to approach soccer with. I can’t find the article now (please send me a link if you know it) but I recently read an article about Bradley getting into a physical fight with his father following a national team game a few years ago. Oh, and his father was the coach of the national team when it happened. That’s right, Michael’s father, Bob Bradley was the US coach from 2006 to 2011, so Michael is used to being in the spotlight. Now he’s his own man and widely thought to be the best player on the team.

Jurgen Klinsmann

When Bob Bradley was fired in 2011, the United States soccer leaders turned to Jurgen Klinsmann to take over. Klinsmann is a former star of the German National team. He was a great goal scorer who helped lead the Germans to a World Cup victory in 1990. He later coached the German team in the 2006 World Cup and was criticized during the lead-up to the tournament because he “commuted to Germany from the United States.” That’s right, the German born Klinsmann has lived in California for years and loves it there. Klinsmann is known for his offensive soccer tactics and he’s clearly not worried about coming off as offensive in other ways too. He made news in the months preceding this World Cup by leaving Landon Donovan, the last team captain and the most well known American player of the last decade, off the team and by blithely telling the media that the United States “cannot win this World Cup because we are not at that level yet.”

Landon Donovan

That’s right, the player who Klinsmann left chose not to bring to Brazil is there anyway, at least his presence will be. Donovan, who is still playing in the MLS, was quickly snapped up by ESPN as a World Cup analyst. If the United States team does well, the story will be Klinsmann’s brilliant choice to move on from Donovan. If the team doesn’t do well, Donovan will be even more front and center because the story will certainly be about how his absence hurt the team.

The Weather

I’ll let my Dad’s favorite media organization, The Weather Channel, handle this one:

Torrential rains have plagued the site of the opener, Natal—a coastal city of nearly 1 million people in northeastern Brazil—for three days, inundating streets, blocking off roads and triggering a landslide that destroyed at least two homes and forced the evacuations of at least 50 others.

The rain is expected to continue through the game on Monday.

The Game

Okay, after all that, there’s a game to watch. Find yourself a good bar and some Soccer fans to cheer with. If you want to pick up more information about “How to Watch the World Cup Like a True Soccer Nerd” then this wonderful Grantland article is for you. Enjoy!

Why do World Cup Soccer Players Blame the Ball?

To celebrate and prepare for the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup WorkWhy Do Soccer Players Dive so MuchWhat is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? and What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer? The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13. Today we have the special treat of a guest post about World Cup soccer balls by an early adopter of Dear Sports Fan, Al Murray. Enjoy!

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Adidas Footballs
Each one of these balls was inevitably complained about during its World Cup. What will the complaint be this time in Brazil?

International football players, like most any athlete, praise their own skill when things go right and blame the tools when they go wrong. The last few World Cups have continued this tradition with the introduction of some high-tech balls. Each demonstrated the Law of Unintended Consequences in their own unique way.

In 2006, it was that the Teimgeist, German for “Team Spirit”, ball had too much lift and soared over the goal. It was designed to be smooth to reduce drag, but that meant the ball didn’t react well to the wind and it lifted more than anyone wanted. Interestingly it didn’t curve especially well, but its low drag kept it in the realm of higher velocity for long portions of its flight.

In 2010, it was that the Jo’bulanmi, “To Celebrate” in isiZulu, ball “knuckled” at normal kicking speeds thus making goal tending more difficult. It was designed with special panels to induce better roundness and reduce the sailing of the 2006 ball. While it curved fairly well at both high and lower kicking speeds, the seams caught the air at 45-60 MPH (normal free kick speeds) and caused it to not spin but rather “knuckle” at high speeds. For reference, a traditional soccer ball knuckles at~30 MPH, much slower than anyone kicks.

NASA used the 2010 World Cup as a opportunity to engage students in aerodynamics and posted several studies on soccer balls in flight including a nifty simulator: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/soccer.html

And for you more mathematically inclined: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/flteqs.html

There is a really good explanation, with minimal math, at http://www.soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm#world-11-6-8-3

Basically it boils down to this:

  • When you kick a ball, it is given velocity and spin.
  • At a given spin rate, low velocities/high drag result in high curve rates while high velocities/low drag  result in longer flight.
  • At a given velocity, higher spin rates impart more curving.
  • A good kicker will use both velocity and spin to control the ball.

How a kick works:

  • A kick is taken with initial high spin and a velocity (speed & direction) of 45-60, in some cases >70 mph.
  • With high velocity the airflow is turbulent, the velocity effect is stronger than the spin, and the ball has low drag and flies high.
  • Eventually the velocity drops, as drag effects increase, the air flow becomes more laminar and the spin induces a Magnum force which causes the ball to curve in the direction of the spin usually as it reaches and then comes down from the apex of flight.
  • As the ball’s velocity decrease, assuming the rotation speed stays the same, the ball curves more confounding goal keepers (and the occasional outfielder) the world over.

A Good free kicker can shoot the ball outside the defender wall and have it bend back on the goal, sometimes as much as 3 meters! You can see this in long fly balls in baseball and in both free and corner kicks in soccer. Brazilian left fullback and part-time wizard, Roberto Carlos, demonstrates in this video: http://youtu.be/3ECoR__tJNQ?t=1m20s

For 2014, the ball will be the Brazoca, “Brazilian or The Brazilian Way of Life” in Portuguese. I understand they’ve redesigned the ball, getting rid of the flat panels, adding dimples for reduced drag like a golf ball and faster travel with “propeller” patches to add more spin and greater curve at lower speeds. Will this mean more curves? More diving action? More Lift? Or perhaps, given the Law of Unintended Consequences, something completely different?

Guest Author – Al Murray

How a Basketball Team is Like Inigo Montoya

Spurs Heat
Will the Spurs take their revenge on the Heat this year?

The San Antonio Spurs are like Inigo Montoya three-quarters of the way through the Princess Bride. I know what you’re thinking… have I finally and forever lost my mind? The Spurs are an NBA basketball team and Inigo Montoya is a fictional Spanish sword-fighter.  You are technically correct but bear with me and I’ll tell you why they are similar.

In the Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya is single-mindedly obsessed with finding the man who killed his father and defeating him. The death of his father at the hands of a distinctive, six-fingered man, so haunted and infuriated Montoya that he trained harder and smarter than anyone and became one of the greatest fencers in the world. So armed, he pursued his enemy with unequalled intensity and focus until he could say to him, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Last year, the San Antonio Spurs faced the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. The Finals are a best four-out-of-seven series and after five games the Spurs led 3-2. They needed to win only one more game to win the championship. In the sixth game, they led by five points with 28 seconds left in the game. They were so close to winning the finals that the rope used to keep spectators off the court had already been deployed. Then the unthinkable (or at least the very unlikely) happened and the Heat came from behind to win in overtime. In game seven, the Spurs were behind by only two points with less than a minute. They had the ball. Then the unthinkable happened again. Tim Duncan, one of the greatest and most reliable players of all time, missed a shot he’s made a thousand times. Watch the video. Pay close attention to Duncan’s reaction a few seconds after missing the shot and then again a few seconds after that when the Heat call time-out. If there’s a sports equivalent of witnessing your father being murdered, it’s what happened to the Spurs last year in the finals against the Heat.

This year, instead of under-playing the factor of revenge, as teams often do following losses, the Spurs this year have been single-minded and open about their goal — to get back to the finals and beat the Heat. It’s almost as if they’ve been repeating at every practice, during every game, and at every press-conference, “We are the San Antonio Spurs, you beat us in the Finals. Prepare to be defeated.”

We’re almost there. The Heat are up three games to one against the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals and the Spurs are up two games to one against the Oklahoma City Thunder. We still have a little ways to go but if the Spurs make it to play the Heat in the finals, my money (or at least my heart,) is on Montoya to beat the six-fingered man one last time.

Time for Other Television

tv watching
Now is your time for other television. Hit it!

This is a public service announcement on behalf of all of you who share a television with a sports fan. Now is your time for other television! It’s a brief lull in the sports calendar. The excitement of baseball’s opening games has worn out and the realization that there are 155 more games to go has descended. March Madness is over. Football is a distant mirage. The NBA and NHL regular seasons are wrapping up but the playoffs are coming soon. The NHL playoffs begin in five days, the NBA playoffs in less than a month. Now is your chance to dominate! Binge-watch True Detective, Downton Abbey, or Orange is the New Black. Watch new episodes of Mad Men or Game of Thrones live. Put your feet up and lackadaisically jock the remote while you go through episodes of some pleasurable show like the Real Housewives of North Dakota or Say Yes to the Dress, Paisley Edition.

The television is yours, enjoy it!

[Editor’s note: if you live with a golf fan, your results may vary. The biggest golf tournament of the year, The Masters, just started today. But really, if you live with a golf fan, you already know this.]

The "Gang Ties" Dilemma

desean-jackson-93a4893d71e95192
Desean Jackson escapes a tackle.

People often say sports brings people together, which is true in many ways. Bringing people from all walks of life together also often serves to highlight the gaps and misunderstandings that separate them, which can be a good thing as well.

Recently, a professional football team – my Philadelphia Eagles – released a star wide receiver amid rumors that he had “gang ties.” The cause and effect here is unclear: the Eagles have not, and likely will not, say that is why they released him. In fact, they will likely not ever discuss these “gang ties” at all. (Note: “gang ties” will be in quotes throughout this column, because no one anywhere has published anything remotely conclusive tying the player to actual gang activity).

But this happens from time to time in sports because many athletes come from impoverished backgrounds and grew up in circumstances that seem alien to the fans who follow and root for or against them.

It’s much easier for a kid from the suburbs (New Jersey, in my case) to shake a finger at someone for having “gang ties” – I couldn’t have found a gang to join or gang members to hang out with if I’d wanted to (Note: I did not want to and no gang would’ve had me). But too many kids who grew up in Compton, or Chicago, or Camden couldn’t help brushing shoulders with other kids who were in gangs, whether they wanted to or not. Another athlete with a similar background – Richard Sherman of the Seahawks, who has walked into the cultural buzzsaw a couple of times himself – made this point particularly well in a recent column.

I don’t think commentators and fans usually judge a person’s actions without stopping to consider how different their life experiences or circumstances maliciously; they do it because they’re people, and people view the world through the lens of their own experience. I also don’t subscribe to some notion of absolute moral relativism: I love David Simon more than any living artist not named Allen Iverson, but I don’t agree that I’m incapable of judging someone else’s moral choices simply because their life experiences are drastically different than mine.

But incidents like this highlight the sheer hypocrisy in criticizing people for having “gang ties” without stopping for a second to ask why gangs have taken root in so many of our cities – let alone what we would have done growing up in the same situation.

This reminds me of the cultures-colliding aspect of rap music, which for years was derided as not real music, exploitative, violent, and reflective of society’s moral decay – with the critics somehow managing to miss, or ignore, the fact that those lyrics were frequently a reflection of the world that surrounded the rappers. The fact that rap has been around for thirty years and a portion of the population still doesn’t get it suggests that the Desean Jacksons and Richard Shermans of the sports world will continue to make waves simply by putting their life experiences front and center.

Thanks for reading,
Brendan

A One Word March Madness Bracket Guide — 2014

As many of you know, the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Championship tournament begins this week. This event bleeds far over the normal sports-fan border because of the omnipresent BRACKET. March Madness brackets are a fun and usually low-stakes form of gambling that asks people to predict the outcome of all games in the tournament before it even starts. This is harder than it sounds because a mistake in an early round can compound throughout the tournament. As such, winning is often more about luck than anything else.

To help you win your bracket, my colleague Brendan Gilfillan and I created a Dear Sports Fan March Madness Bracket with each team described in a single word. So, instead of wracking your brain picking between Oklahoma and North Dakota St., choose between Fast and Large. My favorite match-ups are between Streaky and Happy and Zone and Butter.

Enjoy!

When is a Conference Not a Conference? A Sports Theseus Paradox

This Wednesday, March 12, the Big East Men’s College Basketball Tournament starts at Madison Square Garden in New York City as it has every year since 1983. This year though, the tournament is different enough that it has many sports fans asking the question, “is this the same tournament?” Similar questions about the consistency of existence have been asked throughout history in the form of a paradox called the Theseus Paradox.

gerry_mcnamara
Syracuse and Pitt, who faced each other in the 2006 finals, are both gone from the Big East.

The Theseus Paradox, first posed by Plutarch in his first century Life of Theseus, asks whether Theseus’ ship, having been preserved by replacing one by one, every single board, is truly the same ship? This question is also commonly asked about “my grandfather’s ax”: This is my grandfather’s ax. My father replaced the head and I replaced the shaft. (As an aside, this is one of the many quotations on my father’s classroom wall. I guess the tree doesn’t grow far from where the apple falls…) The question the paradox asks is about the nature of existence — in the case of a sports conference, what makes the Big East the Big East? Is it the conference name, the location of its tournament, or the teams that play in it?

The Big East was formed in 1980 as a collection of schools, many Catholic, mostly in the Northeast of the country, whose priority when it came to sports was basketball. It quickly became a powerhouse college basketball conference in part because of its television contract with an up and coming network called ESPN. For almost two decades, it drove college basketball and was driven by college basketball but then the rise of college football as the big money-maker for college athletics caught up to it. From the mid-1990s the economics of college sports forced the Big East to start making moves to improve its standing in College Football even at the expense of its basketball history. It added schools like Miami, West Virginia, and Virginia Tech which were not only far from being in the Northeast but were also primarily football schools. This emphasis on football mixed with the Big East’s tendency to be stronger in basketball than football despite its best attempt to conform eventually led, starting in 2004, to the slow but steady flight of football-strong schools from the conference. One of my favorite sports writers, Michael Wilbon, wrote a good article about this in 2011. The conflict came to a head last year when seven of the original members of the Big East (all Catholic and all primarily basketball schools) petitioned the league to break away from the remaining schools and form their own league. They succeeded in seceding and because they represented a majority of the remaining charter members, were able to take the Big East name with them.

This year’s Big East consists of those seven teams plus three more they poached from other leagues. It’s this league that will be having their postseason tournament in Madison Square Garden this week but its unclear how much the new tournament will “feel” like the old one. It will be missing most of its biggest teams and rivalries. Syracuse, UConn, Louisville, and Pitt are gone and with them seventeen of the thirty four Big East historic championship teams. The last remaining historic powerhouse, Georgetown, is robbed of its main rivals and having an unusually weak year. According to Forbes, ticket sales are down 11%. The New York Post argues that what the current tournament has “lost in star power” it has “made up in drama.”

Coming back to the metaphor of the ax, the parallel to the paradox is not complete. Seven of the ten schools in this iteration of the Big East were charter members of the original Big East. So, while the head of the ax may have been changed, at least the shaft is the same piece of wood. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes added a question to the paradox using the metaphor of a ship — what, he posed, if the original planks had been collected on their way out of the ship, and assembled back into another ship? Which would be the “real” ship? Luckily we don’t have to answer this question about basketball because the teams that have left the Big East have mostly scattered into other conferences.

What’s the answer? Is the Big East still the Big East? Perhaps there’s a clue to be found in (the all-knowing, all-powerful,) Wikipedia having two seperate entries for the Big East, one pre-2013, one post? Perhaps there is no answer? Perhaps the only way to know will be to tune in and watch the tournament…

Winter Olympics: Post-final Thoughts About the Media

I know, I know, you thought I was done writing about the Olympics. I thought I was too but something has been bothering me in the nether-reaches of my brain. 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.

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With the possible exception of terrorism, this simply wasn’t true. None of it. There were reasonably fresh tomatoes and cucumbers at breakfast every morning that clearly had not been stored for three months. The people I met and even those I passed on the street seemed generally happy to show their neighborhoods to the world. I did sense and enjoy a little bit of, how do I describe it, self-deprecating humor in their enjoyment? Sochi and the surrounding area isn’t a perfectly curated resort, indeed, it’s probably not even all that well run, and I think the people who I ran into we’re a little amused that the world had descended on them. Either it took a Jersey boy to identify this in them or I was projecting.

I am certain that some of the hotel accommodations did have serious issues. By no means am I saying that the journalists and athletes who were there before the games began were falsifying their tweets and pictures showing yellow water, oddly designed toilet facilities, and other bizarre oddities. There were some hoaxes (apparently Jimmy Kimmel had something to do with the photo of a wolf inside a hotel) but the larger problem was twofold. First, people have a really hard time understanding that something that happens to one person in a large group is as rare as it is. This is one of the reasons why an act of terror that kills a few people can scare so many (more on terrorism in a minute, but this is equally true of a traffic accident, a murder, a lightening strike.) Second, the media clearly benefited from exaggerating or embellishing these stories and encouraging people to take them seriously. There’s an old saying in newspapers, “if it bleeds it leads.” In this case the most direct approach to driving general interest in a group of sports with only fringe followings was to gleefully project disaster.

Before the games, I took the terror threat quite seriously and I still do today. The tricky thing for anti-terrorism forces is that the only evidence of their work is negative. If they mess up, even once, everyone knows. If they succeed, the natural reaction for onlookers like me is to say that the threat was overblown and there’s simply no good way for them to advocate for themselves. Most of the time, if an attack is prevented, publicizing it will be a bad idea because it would compromise intelligence sources or gathering methods. So, let’s leave this one for historians to decide.

The problem is that people stayed home. That’s not a big deal if they were fans, (although one of the real problems with Olympic Games is that they cost so much and bring in so little, so any loss in profit is bad for the host country and eventually bad for the Games themselves,) but it is a big deal for a parent, sibling, child, or partner of an athlete to miss seeing them in person. The Olympics only come once every four years and qualifying next time is no lock. What a shame to miss out on that so that television stations can grab a few extra eyes and newspapers can sell a few more editions.