Category: Understanding Sports

What is the Winter Classic Hockey Game?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the Winter Classic hockey game? Should I watch it?

Thanks,
Sam

— — —

Dear Sam,

The Winter Classic is the name given to an NHL regular season game scheduled on New Year’s Day with a special twist: it’s played outdoors. This year’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be televised on NBC at 1 pm ET. The game will be played on a rink constructed in the center of the University of Michigan’s football stadium, nicknamed “the big house.” The USA Today writes that 107,000 people are expected to attend, which would break the record for attendance at a hockey game. There’s lots of reasons to watch, even if you’re not a hockey fan. Here are a few of them:

The Winter Classic Makes Professional Sports into a Game

An argument I hear from some of my friends who prefer college sports over professional ones is that making a business out of a game ruins the fun of the game. Well, for one day, at least, the Winter Classic transforms hockey back into a game. NHL players are from all over the world but most of them grew up in Canada, Scandanavia, or Russia, and many of them grew up playing outside on frozen ponds as well as inside on rinks devoted to youth hockey leagues. Listen to what some of the players have to say about playing outside:

“As soon as everyone walked in it was like a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds in here” — Red Wings Goalie, Jimmy Howard

“I got chills coming into the building. You grow up playing on outdoor rinks as a kid… it’s going to be a special game to be a part of… it’s going to be an experience I’ll never forget.” — Maple Leafs defenseman, Dion Phaneuf

It’s a regular season game that counts for the standings, but it’s also a throwback to childhood for many of the players and a ton of fun. Like that NFL game between the Eagles and the Lions a few weeks back, when the players are having fun, their joy actually comes across through the television and augments your viewing experience.

The Winter Classic Isn’t a Classic, But It’s Becoming One

The “classic” in Winter Classic is more aspirational than it is a reflection of reality. The first Winter Classic game was played in 2008, so next to some other elements of the NHL like the 121 year-old Stanley Cup (the NHL Championship trophy,) the game is in its infancy. The NHL has done a wonderful job with it though and I would venture to say it’s on its way to becoming a classic tradition. For starters, there’s the deal the league made with HBO to film a four episode season of their sports documentary series 24/7 about the two teams who will play in the Winter Classic. The show is a great lead-in to the game and has at times created its own miniature stars. There’s also an alumni game the night before the Winter Classic that brings back legendary (or just old) players from both teams who get to skate with each other on the outdoor rink. The 30,000+ fans who watched and the players who participated love the chance to relive the past.

The last clever part of the game is that the NHL reached into the sports schedule in just the right place at the right time. New Year’s Day was traditionally dominated by College Football bowl games. As the college football bowl schedule became more and more crowded (one could say bloated) over the last ten or fifteen years, the schedule started creeping deeper into January. The Rose Bowl and Tostitos Fiesta Bowl are still on New Year’s Day but begin later, at 5 pm and 8 pm ET. The other BCS (most important) bowl games are played on Jan 2, 3, or 6. The NHL cleverly swooped in right as New Year’s Day was starting to open up to other sports programming.

The Winter Classic is a Beautiful Sight

An outdoor hockey game can be stunning to watch. The teams always wear uniforms designed just for the Winter Classic. This is obviously a merchandise selling tactic but they also tend to be bolder in color than the normal jerseys, optimized to look good outside. The organizers of the game pick their locations carefully to create stunning tableaus, and there’s always the chance of falling snow to push the images even farther. Here are some photos from Winter Classics, past and present:

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Enjoy the game,
Ezra Fischer

Why are Bowl Games Called Bowl Games?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why are college football bowl games called bowl games? Is it because of the Super Bowl?

Thanks,
Bill

— — —

Dear Bill,

College bowl games actually pre-date the Super Bowl by many years so if one was named after the other, it was the Super Bowl that was named after college football bowl games. Why college bowl games are named bowl games is another question entirely. The simple answer is that they are called bowl games because they are the biggest and most festive football games of the year, and as such are played in the biggest and most festive stadiums — which have historically almost all been shaped like bowls.

According to Wikipedia, the “history of the bowl game” began in 1902 when the “Tournament of Roses Association” sponsored a football game on New Year’s Day that was supposed to match the best college football team from the Eastern half of the country against the best in the West. As would become a tradition for this type of game, it didn’t quite match expectations. The game was a joke with Michigan beating Stanford 49-0 before Stanford quit with eight minutes left! Its lack of competitiveness left an impression on the organizers though and “for the next 13 years, the Tournament of Roses officials ran chariot races, ostrich races, and other various events instead of football.” They brought back football in 1916 and by 1921 it was so popular that a new stadium was commissioned that could hold the 40,000 plus spectators. Architect Myron Hunt copied his design from that of the Yale football stadium called the Yale Bowl because of its distinctive smooth, continuous, bowl-like shape. (A quick aside — the word bowl goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European when it meant “rounded or swollen.”) The stadium was complete by 1923 and the Tournament of the Roses game that year between Penn State and USC was the first to be called the Rose Bowl.

The Rose Bowl stood alone for many years until the mid-thirties when four southern cities decided to emulate the successful tourist attraction by creating their own bowl games. The Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and Sun bowls sprouted between 1935 and 1937. This number has continued to grow throughout the years with a total of eight in 1950, 11 in 1970, 15 in 1980, 19 in 1990, 25 in 2000, and 35 today. The increasing number has created a dispersal of the interest and reverence felt for the original bowl games. It’s just not that big of a deal when 70 of the 120 college football teams play in a bowl game. Even the names of the bowl games feel less important now than they used to. It’s hard to blame the organizers of these games for selling the naming rights to them but one wishes the sponsors would be a little less parochial: San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia bowl, Franklin American Mortgage Music City bowl, BBVA Compass bowl. It’s little wonder that the clever website sellingout.com recommends selling the phrase “bowl game” short in the imaginary stock market of words.

 Using the word “bowl” to describe a sporting event has spread far and wide. As you noted in your question, the championship game of the NFL is called the Super Bowl. Other professional American Football leagues have used the moniker. The European Football League calls their championship game the Eurobowl. There is a Mermaid Bowl in Denmark and a Maple Bowl in Finland. In Canada there is the Banjo Bowl which is not a championship game but instead is used to label a rivalry game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Other rivalry games, even American college football games, have bowl names, like the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama or the amusingly named Egg Bowl between Mississippi State and Ole Miss. Sometimes the word bowl will be used to retroactively refer to a notable game like the Ice Bowl played in Green Bay, Wisconsin at -15 degrees Fahrenheit. 

A historical theme that I find interesting is the transition from having the word “bowl” convey a sense of exhibition (and therefore inconclusiveness if not unimportance in terms of league standings) to almost the exact opposite meaning where “bowl” conveys that a game is of the utmost importance to standings. In todayifoundout.com’s post, Why Championship Football Games are Called Bowls, Daven Hiskey writes that the NFL first stole the word “bowl” for its end-of-year all-star exhibition game, the Pro Bowl. This suggests the earlier, tourist attraction, exhibition meaning. Years later, after the NFL had merged with the AFL, and now had a championship game to name, the league chose to copy Major League Baseball and name it the “World Championship Game.” Nonetheless, the phrase Super Bowl soon overtook World Championship, and by the second or third year of the league, was the de facto name for the final game, and soon after became official.

That’s probably more than you reckoned for about bowls! Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What Does it Mean to be Mathematically Eliminated?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does it mean to be “mathematically eliminated” from something?

Thanks,
Will

There’s nothing worse as a fan than having your team mathematically elminated

— — —

Dear Will,

“Mathematically eliminated” is one of those phrases that you hear often in sports but not in too many other contexts. A team or player that is mathematically eliminated cannot win or qualify for something in any of the possible permutations of future outcomes. This can happen within a game, within a season, or within a tournament or playoffs. You’re probably hearing it a lot now because the NFL season is in its 16th of 17 weeks and teams are being mathematically eliminated left and right. Let’s explore some of the common forms of mathematical elimination.

Mathematically eliminated from qualifying for the playoffs

A team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs when no possible permutation of wins and losses in all the remaining games in a season result in them qualifying for the playoffs. This is a surprisingly high bar. For instance, with only two games remaining, the 6-8 Pittsburgh Steelers are still alive for a playoff spot according to CBS. What would have to happen for them to qualify? According to the Altoona Mirror, the Steelers need “about 10 things to happen” and the chances of them all happening are around 100 to 10. They detail all of the necessary dominoes here. Stranger things have happened, for sure, but it certainly stretches the imagination to think that all ten of the items are going to happen just the way the Steelers need them to to make the playoffs. One could say they have been plausibly eliminated but as long as there is a single path for them to make the playoffs, the team and their fans will keep hoping.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — shootout edition

Although the phrase “mathematically eliminated” is almost only ever used about the playoffs, as explained above, there are other types of mathematical elimination in sports. A shootout is one example. In many hockey and soccer leagues, if a game is tied the teams play timed overtime periods. If it is still tied after that, the game is decided by a series of one-on-one contests between a player and a goalie. This is called a shootout. The shootout is arranged like you or I would play odds-and-evens or rock-paper-scissors. In the NHL it is a best of three, in Major League Soccer and international soccer, it is a best of five. Both of these contests work in frames — first one team goes, then the other, repeat. This leaves the door open for mathematical elimination within the shootout. If a team has scored more goals than the other team has remaining shots (in hockey, a team would have to score the first two with the other team missing the first two. In the longer soccer shootout, there are more ways for this to happen,) it’s impossible for that second team to win. In this case, the game is over. The final shots cannot possibly have an effect on the outcome of the game, so they aren’t taken.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — playoff edition

The same logic found in the shootout is also used during the best out of five or seven game series found in the NHL, NBA, and MLB playoffs. Earlier this year, we answered the question, “what is a sweep?” A sweep is when a team wins the first three games of a five game playoff series or the first four in a seven game series. In either case, this is a decisive victory because the winless team doesn’t have enough games in the series left to have any chance of winning the majority of games. They are mathematically eliminated from the playoff series. Like the shootout, the final games of the playoff series are not played because they could not possibly have any affect on the outcome.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — end of game edition

Mathematical elimination can also happen during a game in some sports. Baseball games and tennis matches are organized like little miniature playoff series or shootouts. Tennis matches are organized into best-of-three or five set contests. Each set is organized into best of thirteen game contests. In each of these layers, if a player mathematically eliminates their opponent by winning seven games or two or three sets, the theoretical remainder of the set or match is not played. Baseball is roughly the same. The contest is divided into innings that each have a first half (or top as it’s called) and second half (bottom.) The away team bats in the top of the inning and the home team in the bottom. In the ninth and final inning, if the home team is winning at the end of the top of the inning, the game is over. There is no way for the road team to score any runs in the half of the inning when they are in the field, so there is no reason for that half-inning to be played. They are mathematically eliminated from the game.

Football is perhaps the most curious sport when it comes to in-game mathematical elimination. Football isn’t organized into innings or frames or sets and matches. It’s one continuous game but a wrinkle in the rules makes it possible for a team to (more or less) be mathematically eliminated. In football, the clock either runs or doesn’t run between plays based on the outcome of the play. If there is an incomplete pass, a player runs out of bounds with the ball, or there is a penalty, the clock stops. When a player is tackled with the ball within the boundaries of the field, the clock keeps running, and only a time-out can stop it. If a team is winning AND they have the ball AND the opposing team has no time-outs left, the team with the ball can simulate being tackled on the field by snapping the ball to the quarterback and having him kneel down. This keeps the clock running for up to 40 seconds between each play and a team with the ball can do this three times consecutively. Teams use this strategy as a form of mathematical elimination. If there is less time left in the game (40 x 3 = 2:00) than a team can waste by kneeling, the game is effectively over.

This is really only an almost mathematical elimination because the team with the ball could mistakenly fumble the ball during the snap and if the other team picked it up, they could have a chance of winning. Teams on the losing side of the football game almost never even try to make this happen because it’s so unlikely that it seems lacking in common and professional courtesy to shoot for it. In my memory, the only coach to instruct his team to go for this was former Rutgers head coach, Greg Schiano. Trust my alma mater to foster this type of radical (and rude) thinking! All jokes aside, mathematical elimination is a tricky thing for sports leagues to figure out because it undermines a basic motivation for teams and players: once you have been mathematically eliminated, what is the purpose of continuing to try? This problem is most common when teams have been eliminated from the playoffs during a season and, because the order they get to draft players for next season in is set in inverse (or roughly inverse) order of their record in this season, they have an incentive to lose as many games as possible. This is called tanking and is a scourge to the sports world roughly equal to the flu in the normal world or sarcoidosis on House.

It’s a scourge for another post though, so until then, happy holidays!
Ezra Fischer

Happy Thanksgiving! How to Enjoy the Football as much as the Food

Dear Readers,

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, signed up for our email list or followed us on Twitter or Facebook, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year. Writing this blog has been a really great part of my year. I hope everyone has a wonderful day today whether it’s full or devoid of sports!

Here are several posts I wrote to help prepare for more football filled Thanksgiving celebrations. Enjoy!

This post explains why football is an important part of celebrating Thanksgiving for many sports fans: how football is about tradition, how it’s a marker of time passing, and how it makes me feel like I belong.
I also wrote plot summaries of each of the three games today:

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
The incredible story of Matt Flynn, a backup quarterback who only plays well for Green Bay.

Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
The Cowboys wear the white hats, the Raiders have black souls.

Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC
Just when you’re ready to sneak back into the kitchen for a turkey sandwich… BOOM! another football game begins.

All the best,
Ezra

Thanksgiving's Three Fs: Family, Food, and Football

As a companion to this post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It’s got everything you could want in a holiday: family, food, and football. All three of those F-related aspects of Thanksgiving can be the cause of great joy and the cause of much F-word inducing consternation as well. Of the three, the football has perhaps the lowest stakes, but for many of us, it’s an important part of the day. Tradition, inclusion, time, and snacks are a few of the reasons why.

Thanksgiving is about tradition and so is football

Every holiday is about tradition: the way your family decorates the Christmas tree, the references to childhood that only your family would understand, your mother’s baked ziti. Thanksgiving is perhaps the most purely tradition oriented holiday because it doesn’t have any religious underpinning. The NFL has been playing football on Thanksgiving since 1920. It’s a tradition that’s remained a predictable part of Thanksgiving for many households since 1953 when it was first televised. Other sports lay claim to holidays. The NBA plays marquee games on Christmas day. New Year’s day was traditionally a day for college football until the NHL began televising their outdoor “winter classic” that day. Only the NFL doubles down on tradition by having the same two teams host games every year. The Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys always host games on Thanksgiving. A few years ago the league added a third game at night with a rotating cast but the day games remain a constant. There’s real comfort in consistency, particularly when it comes to family. From generation to generation, through births, deaths, marriages, divorces, estrangements, and reconciliation, when Thanksgiving rolls around, you can count on seeing the Lions and the Cowboys play football.

Football on Thanksgiving makes me feel like I belong

I’m proud to be different. I used to revel in switching between Hot 97’s hip-hop and NPR when I commuted to work by car. I love that in past years my family has cooked quesadillas, Chinese food, and corned beef and cabbage[1] for Thanksgiving dinner. I wouldn’t change any of it for the world[2] but I am also drawn to feeling like I belong. On a holiday that is about the shared history of all Americans, (whether your family immigrated by land strait thousands of years ago or by air a few days ago,) I want to feel like I am unified in some way with the rest of the country. Unity through football is a funny concept and has a few meanings. There’s the literal unity — I’m guessing more people in the United States will be watching the football games than any other single shared experience excepting, perhaps, the Macy’s Day Parade and arguing with your family. There’s also an amorphous unity — football fans come in all shapes, genders, socio-economic statuses, sizes, language preferences, sexual preferences, colors, and intensities. Watching football on Thanksgiving, as odd as it may seem, makes me feel like I belong in this country, and I like it.

Sports are a marker of time

One thing that people who aren’t sports fans often marvel at is the way that some sports fans can remember the most minute details of sporting events that happened years ago. I am not one of those fans but I use sports as a marker of time in my life. Sometimes it’s a remarkable game that, like a popular song, gets lodged in my head and becomes evocative of that time in my life. I’ll always remember watching game six of the Lakers v. Kings NBA playoff series on a television resting on the floor of my first apartment in 2002 or stumbling out of a bar (from bewildered excitement, not drink) mid-afternoon after the United States’ miraculous injury-time goal against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup. Sometimes the games aren’t memorable but they help me remember important times in my life, like the death of my Uncle Pete (it was first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, not that I watched it, but I remember that the Penguins beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-0).

Football on Thanksgiving marks time in a different way by staying the same while other things change. Football wasn’t a big part of my experience of Thanksgiving but I remember being a kid and rooting for famous and somewhat mythical Lions running back Barry Sanders to score every time he touched the ball. Later on, I remember ducking into a girlfriend’s living room to enjoy the oasis of watching football with her grandfather. And I have fond memories of being at my own grandparents house for our big annual get-together on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and hoping there was an hockey game between the Islanders and the Rangers so I could enjoy the way my cousin Jared rooted for his beloved Rangers in what was definitely an Islanders household.

Snacks!!

I know, I know, there’s turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie. But don’t you want some potato chips and pretzels? I do! If any of this has opened you up to enjoying some of the Thanksgiving football this year, tune in tomorrow for plot summaries of the games.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1.  (CB&C as we call it)↵
  2. Okay, maybe some of the conversations my brother and father have about music theory or advanced mathematics do get a little dry for me, but…↵

Creating Narrative from Sports

The Nets are talented, experienced, and expected to win. What story can I tell myself to make me get behind them?

One of the things that I think is the most misunderstood by people who don’t watch sports is exactly how much story-telling the average sports fan does. Sports leagues, sports media, and even the athletes themselves actively try to create stories about sports for fans to consume. Sports fans activate their imaginations themselves and project narratives they themselves want to see onto their favorite teams and players. This mixture of consuming and creating stories from sports is one of the elements of fandom that keeps sports fans coming back game after game and year after year. It’s a way in which the following of sports is not so different from the playing with legos or dolls or stuffed animals that we all did as children. It’s also a reason why the idea of “fantasy sports” is a little silly. Sports are already an exercise in fantasy!

A recent article in The New York Times by Randal C. Archibold profiled “Juan Villoro, one of Mexico’s most decorated and esteemed writers — who also happens to be a leading soccer analyst.” Written a few weeks ago, when Mexico’s chances of qualifying for the World Cup looked bleak Villoro was eloquent about how he interprets international soccer:

“Every World Cup team reflects its country’s social model,” he said a few days after the column. “When Spain won last time, it was about middle-class aspiration, a nation making it. France’s victorious team before that,” in 1998, “reflected the multinational ideal it aspires to be.”

“And Mexico now,” he said, “it’s a combination of the nation that has been promised a lot, but the promises have not been fully fulfilled and there is a feeling like maybe they never will be. It is a very Mexican team in that regard.”

I wonder what Villoro thinks now that Mexico has qualified for the World Cup by beating New Zealand in a two game playoff? You may guess that he has come up with a new narrative or that he’s found a way to wedge the current (fleeting, he might write) success of the team into his existing narrative of unfulfilled promises but my guess is that either way he’s still telling stories about his country’s team.

Towards the end of the article, Archibold writes a line which I think is exactly right, “But more broadly, Mr. Villoro sees how we entertain ourselves as essential to understanding who we are.” I think this is a major reason why I find it harder to root for my favorite teams when they are, well, really good. It’s much harder for me to create compelling stories with a team that is more talented, more experienced, and expected to win as the protagonist. It’s much more fun to root for a young, up-and-coming team. That type of team fits into coming-of-age narratives, into stories about the dawning of a new era, about young David’s beating established Golaiths. The opposite can also be fun. I am in the process of convincing myself that the Brooklyn Nets this year are worth rooting for. The Nets this year are perhaps the most outrageous collection of over-priced, over-the-hill former stars ever. Their lineup every-night sounds like an all-star team from 2007; and because of that, I’ve found it hard to get behind them. But, now that they’ve started the year with only three wins in the first dozen games, I have a perfect story to tell myself about them. They are the group of bank robbers come back together for one last score (Oceans’s Thirteen,) they are a group of Samurai or gunfighters who band together to protect a village from bandits even though they themselves are weary of fighting (The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven.) I love stories about old-age and treachery staving off youth and vigor for just one more day, one more game, one more season. And now, I love the Nets!

The way we entertain ourselves is revealing about who we are, so the next time you watch sports with someone, ask them what the plot is — ask them what stories they are telling themselves about the game they’re watching.

What is a Snap in Football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a snap in football? I hear it all the time in what sounds like many different contexts. Can you explain them all?

Thanks,
Ollie

— — —

Dear Ollie,

You’re right, there are a lot of different uses of the word snap in football. There’s a snap count, there’s a person on a football team called the “long snapper,” and a snap can refer to the act of snapping or the moment of the snap. In this post, we’ll go through them all and connect them to other elements of football. Finally, we’ll ask why it’s called a snap and what it tells us about football.

The Act of Snapping a Football

When a football play begins, the ball is motionless on the ground, positioned on an imaginary line which stretches from side-line to side-line, called the line of scrimmage. One player grabs the ball with his hand and moves it backwards between his legs to another player. That action is called the snap. The player who performs the act of snapping is the center. There are two main kinds of snaps, referred to by the position of the quarterback. A quarterback is either “under center” to receive the snap or “in the shotgun.” With a quarterback under center (right behind the center, so close that he rests one hand on the under-side of the center’s butt,) the center quickly hands him the ball through his legs. When a quarterback is in the shotgun formation, he is a between five and seven yards behind the quarterback. Snapping the football in this formation is a more challenging task — it requires spinning the football while throwing it backwards between his legs so that it flies in a straight, easy to catch spiral. You may also hear that there was a “direct snap.” This is a totally normal snap — either under center or shotgun but instead of a quarterback receiving the ball, it is a running back.

The act of snapping the football connects football to its past when, like rugby, throwing the ball forwards was not allowed. Although the majority of plays in most football games today involve throwing the ball forward, all of them begin with a backwards pass in the form of a snap. In case you’d like to learn how to snap a football, wikihow.com has a great tutorial.

Snap Count

The phrase “snap count” is pretty common but has two only tangentially related meanings. One meaning refers to any vocal cue that a quarterback gives to his own team to synchronize their movement with the snapping of the football. Because only one player on the offensive side is allowed to move at a time before the snap, a good snap count provides the offense with an advantage over the defense; it knows when to start moving and can get a head-start on the defensive players. Once in a while defensive players will mimic a quarterback’s snap count in an effort to get the offense to move at the wrong time. This is illegal and a defensive team may be penalized for “simulating the snap count.” Another meaning of the phrase snap count is the number of plays a player is a part of, usually in a single game. In this use, the snap is representative of a play and the count is just the act of counting the number of plays or snaps someone is a part of.

The Snap as a Moment

As described in the first paragraph, before a play begins, the football is motionless on the ground. The act of snapping the football begins the play and, confusingly, the moment that this happens is also called a snap. This is important because the exact moment a play begins is vital for a couple of important rules in football. Aside from the one offensive player who is allowed to move before the snap (said to be “in motion”) if any other player moves before the snap, they are offside. If a defensive player moves across the line of scrimmage and is not able to get back to his side of that line before the snap, he has encroached and will be called for a penalty. Dear Sports Fan covered both of these rules in our post on offside rules in various sports. Football, similar to basketball, has a play clock that counts down and requires a team to make an offensive play. In the NFL, the play clock is forty seconds long. If the clock runs out before the snap, there is a delay of game penalty.

The Snapping Specialist

While most snapping is done by someone playing the center position, there are some snaps that are so critical and so technically difficult that teams pay someone to perform them, even if that is almost all they can do on a football field. This player is the long snapper. He snaps the ball for punts and field goal attempts. For a punt, the long snapper needs to spiral the ball backwards to someone standing closer to 15 yards behind him than the five yards of a shotgun snap. The mechanics of a field goal snap are even more exacting because the snapper has to snap the ball in such a way that it spins exactly the right number of turns. This way the field goal holder has an easy job of placing the ball with the laces facing away from the kicker’s foot so that the kick flies true. The New York Times produced an amazing multi-media feature on this a few weeks ago.

Why is it called a snap? And what can we learn about football from it?

There doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus about why the snap is called this snap. This delights me because making up derivations runs deep in my family. Google defines snap as “a sudden, sharp cracking sound or movement” and as a secondary meaning, “in football: a quick backward movement of the ball from the ground that begins a play.” Football can be inaccessible or less pleasing to fans of other sports because it lacks the fluid motion and continuous play present in sports like soccer, basketball, and hockey. Instead of fluid play, football is characterized by quick bursts of action beginning from a standstill and creating havoc in a matter of seconds before coming to a halt. It’s no wonder then that we call the act that initiates these sudden, sharp bursts of movement a “snap.”

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

 

 

How Difficult is Running a Marathon?

Dear Sports Fan,

I live in New York along the path of the Marathon. I enjoy cheering the runners on as they go by but I’ve never been tempted to train for a marathon myself. I’m wondering, how difficult is running a marathon?

Curious in Queens,
Carl

NYC Marathon
A lot of people run the NYC Marathon each year but that doesn’t mean it’s not difficult.

— — —

Dear Carl,

That’s so cool that you live on the route of the New York City Marathon. I’ve heard from friends who have run it that they really appreciate the people on the route who cheer or set up their houses as giant stereo systems or in some other way enliven the long slog to the finish-line. I’ve never run a marathon, so I can’t write from personal experience, but it seems like a marathon is very, very difficult but accessible to most people who want to run one.

A marathon is a 26 mile, 385 yard race run by over half a million people each year. 48,000 people will run in the NYC Marathon alone! Most of these people are amateur runners, people like you and me, except that they for any number of reasons decided to train for and run in a long-distance race. Most of the runners don’t treat the marathon like a race; at least, not the kind of race you might have had as a kid when you and a friend ran to see who could reach the end of a path the fastest. For one thing, there’s no way that 48,000 people can start at the same time. The start of the race is highly regimented and staggered event[1] where the relatively small group of professional runners who actually have a chance to win start 25 minutes before the next wave of slower runners. No, most of the people who run a marathon are trying to beat only a personal goal they’ve set. Data, put together on Deadspin.com by Rueben Fischer-Baum suggests that many are successful in this; instead of a smooth curve of finishing times, there are little spikes at even ten and thirty minute marks.

Almost all (98%) of the marathoners who start the race, complete the race. That’s very different from what would happen if amateurs tried to complete other professional sporting feats. An amateur, even a trained amateur, would have almost no chance of hitting a major league fastball, finishing a shift in hockey, scoring more than a fluke basket or two in an NBA game, or even just making it through a football play without a major injury. Then again, a layperson might have less chance of hitting a baseball than completing a marathon, but they’d certainly be less sore after trying. Just finishing something doesn’t mean that it wasn’t difficult to do.

The curious distance of the race and its history speak eloquently, if somewhat unreliably to how difficult it is. The marathon was invented as an athletic event in 1896 by some of the architects of the first Olympic Games who were searching for an event to catch the imagination of spectators and journalists. They recalled the Ancient Greek story/myth of an Athenian soldier who ran from Marathon to Athens to spread the news of a victorious battle over the Persians. The legend ends with the runner’s end as he dies of exhaustion after successfully delivering his message. There’s a lot of conflicting reports of this story — had he fought that day? did he follow the path of the road that was measured in 1896 to get the figure of 26 miles, 385 yards? or was it a shorter road? had he just run a 150 miles on another mission when he left on the 26 mile run that killed him? did he really die?

A very small percentage of runners these days die. There was an article in Time magazine entitled “Running a Marathon Won’t Kill You” that stated the death rate of marathoners as 1 per 259,000. Of course, that’s consistent with the 1 per 1 of the legend but I would suggest we just take that whole story with a grain of salt. Talking about salt, marathon runners today keep themselves fresh by eating and drinking all kinds of things during the race. The Huffington Post’s recent article on marathon nutrition suggested everything from specially created and marketed runner’s gels to gummi bears and marshmallows. Counter-intuitively, one thing that actually kills a marathoner once every other year or so is too much water, according to this article in the Washington Post. If you see someone in distress tomorrow, make sure to check how much water they’ve had before you offer them some more.

The popularity of marathon runners has brought on a slew of articles minimizing the difficulty of running a marathon. The New York Times ran an article a few years ago with the mildly obnoxious headline, “Plodders Have a Place, but is it in a Marathon?” In it they quote an experienced marathon saying, “It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore. Now it’s, ‘How low is the bar?’” This past spring the Running Blog of the Guardian surveyed runners trying to distinguish themselves from the increasingly common marathoners by performing feats like running seven marathons in seven days or running across the continental United States.

I don’t think the fact that many people can run a marathon suggest it is anything other than an extraordinary feat worthy of congratulations. Here’s two suggestions on how to show people just how impressive marathons are. First, have them tune in to ABC at around 11:30 tomorrow morning. The professional men’s runners will be nearing the end of the race. After 24 or 15 miles of running at a pace of under five minutes per mile, the runners will begin to sprint, raising their pace to around four and a half minutes per mile. After that, ask the skeptic to go run a single mile with you. If even that doesn’t work, you can break out my favorite fact about marathons, and one that I once lost a bet on. Ask your friend if they think a runner could ever beat a person on horseback in a race of this distance? Then show them the Wikipedia page for the amazing Man vs. Horse Marathon run each year in Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells which was won by a runner twice in the last ten years.

Happy running and happy cheering,
Ezra Fischer

 

 

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. As opposed to the finish, which sees many people staggering to the finish line, exhausted but victorious.↵

Why Are Athletes and Sports Fans so Superstitious

Dear Sports Fan,

Why are athletes and sports fans so superstitious? You never see articles about stock brokers or opera goers doing insane things but for some reason sports seems to create so much craziness.

Thanks,
Hugh

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The team always wins when I wear my orange beard and headband. Right?

— — —

Dear Hugh,

It’s Halloween today, so it’s a perfect time to answer this question about sports and superstition. You’re right — sports do seem to inspire an enormous amount of mystical lunacy among the people who play them for a living and the people who follow them closely.  I happen to think that superstition is one of the more amusing elements of following sports, so I’m going to share a few examples. After that, we’ll deal with the question of why sports create this lunacy among us.

Much has been made about the World Series winning Boston Red Sox and their superstitious beards. After they won the series, Reuters posted an article with the headline, “Boston Bond and Beards drive Red Sox to Victory.” While we won’t get into the fact that the playoff beard is a well-known and thoroughly explored phenomenon in hockey, it is worth noting that a reputable news organization is suggesting that the growing of beards had an effect on the outcome of a sporting event. This is, of course, more or less the reason why hockey fans across the continent stop shaving when the playoffs begin — they are hoping their own shaving patterns affect the outcome of sporting events.

On the subject of beards, Deadspin.com ran a story about a man in Minnesota who decided he wouldn’t shave his beard until the local NFL football team, the Vikings, won the Super Bowl.  That man, Emmett Pearson, died this past Monday, 38 years after he made that promise, still unshaven. Long championship draughts seem to breed that level of superstition as well as wry humor. A long-time Cleveland Browns fan gained posthumous notoriety after specifying in his obituary that he “respectfully requests six Cleveland Browns pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time.” The Browns didn’t go that far but they did send two representatives of the team to his funeral in appreciation for Scott Ensminger’s long-time support of the team which apparently included writing a song for the team and sending it to them each year.

Bud Light has an entire ad campaign based on the concept that drinking bud light will somehow grant good luck to the team you root for. The clever slogan is “It’s only crazy if it doesn’t work.” Business Insider[1] published a list of the 30 strangest superstitions in sports, including one of my favorites — that NBA player Jason Terry falls asleep with the shorts of whatever team his team is playing the night before the game. It makes such logical sense — if you want to win, you’ve got to sleep a night in your opponents’ clothes. Perhaps the best sports superstition I’ve read about in a long time comes from the New York Times article about the various compulsions of players and coaches on the New York Jets football team:

One Friday night about 20 years ago, the Jets’ offensive line coach, Mike Devlin, and his girlfriend, Julie, had a fight. Devlin, then an Iowa Hawkeye, had a great game the next day, and so the next week, he insisted that they fight again. Again he played well.

A tradition was born. Devlin and Julie did not add it to their wedding vows. But in sickness and in health, in Buffalo or in Arizona, they have staged a fake argument by telephone the night before every game — about 350 of them to date.

What is it about sports that inspires players, coaches, and fans to act so strangely? There are lots of fairly obvious reasons. For sports players and even sports fans, the outcome of a game can be very important. Yes, for players there are gobs of money involved as well as the downside of being fired, and for fans there is only the joy of winning balanced against the frustration of losing, but I would argue that most players who make it to the pros are likely to be people who are internally driven to win. Being driven to win has to explain the time and energy put into becoming a professional athlete for most people who do it. There’s also a lot of chance involved in the outcome of games. Sports are incredibly complex and it’s also very difficult to analyze why a game is won or lost. My experience with playing spots is that individual performance, like the result of a game, is highly unpredictable and it’s hard to tell why you feel strong and fast one day and slow and clumsy the next.

If superstition is an attempt to bring rationality to an inexplicable world defined by chance, then it makes sense that sports are the most superstitious area in many people’s lives; they are the most important and most unpredictable aspect in many people’s lives.

There may be another, more curious answer, as suggested in the conclusion of a scholarly study of superstition in top-level athletes done by Michaela Schippers and Paul Van Lange of the Rotterdam School of Management; that it works:

One may speculate, that in preparing for a match, the most important concern is to regulate one’s own psychological and physical state. Thus, sportspersons realistically may see a strong link between enacting superstitious rituals and a desired outcome.

As for fans — there’s no proof of any of our superstitions working, despite what your friend who hasn’t changed his underwear in six months says. The last word on this topic should come from Chuck Klosterman’s essay about why he doesn’t enjoy watching DVR’d sports:

If you think your mind and heart play a role in the game you’re watching, a DVR’d game is like trying to hug a dead body. Your hopes and desires immediately become irrelevant. Which, of course, they always were — but now you can’t even pretend.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

 

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. I guess it’s inside the business of sports, but I’m guessing it’s mostly just a way to get views on their website.↵

Fantasy Football and Sports Reporters' Objectivity

As I’ve been immersed in the football and fantasy football season for the past weeks, a thought has been sneaking up on me bit by bit. If financial reporters are not allowed to purchase stocks and political reporters are not allowed to make contributions to candidates or even make their own political views public… why are we okay with sports reporters participating so passionately in fantasy football leagues?

And participate, they do: At the 13 minute mark of the 10-10-13 edition of ESPN’s fantasy football podcast (yes, I listen to it) fantasy sports pundit Matthew Berry mentioned that sports reporter Ed Werder tweeted:

To his credit, Berry told the audience that this was not official reporting from Werder but instead was conjecture. Berry built off of this with his own conjecture that perhaps Werder has some inside information on the situation based on his long history covering the team and the fact that Werder had picked up Terrance Williams to be on his fantasy team in a league with Matthew Berry. Berry often refers to a sixteen team league he plays in with other ESPN employees called the War Room. This league (if this isn’t a clever hoax) can actually be viewed here and its membership includes reporters and analysts like Adam Schefter, Michael Smith, Trent Dilfer, Mark Schlereth, Ed Werder, Chris Mortensen, and Stephania Bell. Is there money riding on the outcome of this league? Although that is common in most fantasy leagues, it’s hard for me to imagine ESPN would allow their employees to gamble on sports in this way. Then again, ESPN has moved off it’s traditional ignore-that-gambling-exists stance and now has a gambling blog and allows its top personality, Bill Simmons, to openly talk and write about gambling. Regardless of the money, given how often and publicly the War Room league is talked about, it seems to be fiercely competitive.

Berry’s  investigative reporting into reporters’ fantasy actions seems to be becoming a habit. On the same day he tweeted about a fantasy trade made by ESPN reporter Chris Mortensen and former NFL player, now ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer:

What can we make of this? Berry’s job is helping readers and listeners get an edge in their own fantasy leagues. He is suggesting that we use the information that reporter Ed Werder thinks it’s possible that Dallas receiver Terrance Williams supplants Miles Austin in the starting lineup or that Chris Mortensen thinks a lot of tight end Ed Dickson or not very much of running back Rashard Mendenhall to help our fantasy teams. I am open to that use of this information (Terrance Williams is now on my fantasy team) but I am suspicious of it at the same time.

My suspicion is multi-faceted:

  1. Fantasy owners get attached to the players on their teams. As I mentioned in a post on the arrest of Aaron Hernandez for murder, I found it harder to believe that he was capable of that crime because he had been on my fantasy team for years. Fantasy owners become fond of their players and are often prone to overvaluing them when engaging in trade negotiations with another fantasy team. Is it possible that a sports reporter would write favorably about a player because of the unconscious instinct to overvalue the players on one’s own fantasy team?
  2. Fantasy owners promote their players in an effort to convince other people to trade for them. The honorable art of trading in fantasy is finding a team whose strengths match your weaknesses and vice versa so that a trade can work out to benefit both teams. The disreputable art of trading in fantasy is convincing someone that a player who you think is not that good is going to be REALLY REALLY GOOD. I’ve certainly embellished my belief about a player’s prospects to a friend I was trying to trade him to. Is it possible that a reporter might use his or her twitter account to drive up the value of a player they are trying to trade? What about filing an article for the same purpose?
  3. Finally, (and here’s where it gets really crazy,) whether as part of an intentional act of fantasy negotiation or through unconscious bias generated by owning a player, isn’t it likely that something a member of the media says or writes about a player will eventually affect how a real football game is played? A negative article can motivate a player to vengeful greatness or shake a player’s confidence and cause his play to suffer. A carefully placed rumor could cause a divide between teammates or modify how a coach thinks about a player.

It is possible that I’m on to something incredibly profound or that it’s 11:11 pm on a Friday, it’s been a long week, and I’ve watched the Matrix too much. Either way, I not sure I’ll ever be able to listen to an “NFL rumor” again without thinking “I wonder whose team that player is on in the reporter’s fantasy league…