How the NFL can Ruin Your Life

Fan is short for “fanatic” and the fanaticism of NFL fans is never too far from the surface. Two articles recently struck me as being representative, in different ways, of just how important sports can be to a fan’s life. Read on to hear about how sports can make you fat and broke or svelte and rich!

One of my favorite quotes about sports, attributed to the late Sam Kellerman, talks about why fans treat sport like a matter of life or death: “Sports is man’s joke on God, Max. You see, God says to man, ‘I’ve created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you’ll have to grapple with life and death and in the end you’ll die anyway, and it won’t really matter.’ So man says to God, ‘Oh, yeah? Within your universe we’re going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn’t matter, and we’ll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.” An article[1] from the New York Times by Jan Hoffman, suggest[2] that Kellerman might have been right in a very concrete way:

Researchers found that football fans’ saturated-fat consumption increased by as much as 28 percent following defeats and decreased by 16 percent following victories. The association was particularly pronounced in the eight cities regarded as having the most devoted fans, with Pittsburgh often ranked No. 1. Narrower, nail-biting defeats led to greater consumption of calorie and fat-saturated foods than lopsided ones.

In my life, I observe that it is more the act of watching football that leads to the consumption of nachos, hot-dogs, mozzarella sticks, and other delicious and waist-band stretching foods.

If putting your life on the line is not enough for some fans, there’s now a brand new way for them to put their money on the line. Gambling has long been a central focus for many who follow sports. If you don’t believe me, go watch the 1932 Marx Brothers’ movie Horsefeathers and it’s incredibly contemporary story about the fixing of a college football game. Fantasy sports has brought gambling on sports out of the alley and onto main street, in part because it distances the raw gambling from the outcome of the game. Now startup company Fantex has come up with a new way to gamble (or invest as they would have us think about it) on sports — by investing money in a player. Billy Gallagher reports on this story for TechCrunch:

Fantex strikes deals with professional athletes who give up a certain percentage of their income (presumably over an allotted period of time, like the length of their active career) in exchange for the proceeds of [an] IPO. People can then buy shares of that player’s brand, like a stock… presumably, if San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis has a monster year and looks like he’s going to get a bigger endorsement deal or a larger contract in a few years, his stock would rise and a fan could sell their Davis stock and cash out with a real, monetary profit.

Gallagher argues that this is probably not going to be a great deal for the players (surely they can find something better to do with their money) but he is more optimistic about profit for the new class of fan/investors. I can’t wait until they create a market for people who blog about sports — I might be a penny-stock but who knows…

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Thanks to Patty Gibney for sending me this article!↵
  2. If you believe in the dangers of obesity↵

Cue Cards 9-15-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue 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.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Panthers 23, Bills 24 — Buffalo Bills win dramatically on a touchdown pass thrown by rookie quarterback EJ Manuel with two seconds left in the game; wonder how many games the coach of the Panthers has left before he is fired?
Vikings 30, Bears 31 — Our second game that went down to the wire. This time the Bears got a touchdown with 10 seconds remaining to win the game. Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder left pondering what could have been if his name wasn’t Ponder. Ponder.
Redskins 20, Packers 38 — Maybe the Redskins’ poor start shouldn’t be surprising considering their quarterback, Robert Griffin III, tore his ACL less than 9 months ago; or maybe Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are really good at offensive football.
Dolphins 24, Colts 20 — Colts quarterback Andrew Luck could not create a dramatic comeback against the surprisingly 2-0 Miami Dolphins.
Rams 24, Falcons 31 — The Rams are seemingly on a quest to become a team like the Falcons; close, but no cigar.
Browns 6, Ravens 14 — Defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens rebound from a bad first week loss with a win against a bad team.
Cowboys 16, Chiefs 17 — Long-time former Eagles coach Andy Reid, now coaching the Chiefs, has the ability to beat old Eagles Rival, Dallas Cowboys, in his muscle memory.
Titans 24, Texans 30 — NFL games barely ever go to overtime, but this one did.
Chargers 33, Eagles 30 — The Eagles are supposed to have a revolutionary, fast moving offense, and they do, but today the Chargers out-paced and out-scored them.
Lions 21, Cardinals 25 — It’s a little hard to say this early in the season but it seems like the Cardinals are a good bad team and the Lions are a bad good team. Today the good bad team beat the bad good team. Go figure.
Saints 16, Buccaneers 14 — The Buccaneers spent all week acting like a bad reality show with feuding between coach and players but they were still able to almost beat the Saints. Who will get kicked off the island in this next week’s episode of The Buccaneers? Could be quarterback Josh Freeman.
Broncos 41, Giants 23 — Called the “Manning Bowl” because the quarterbacks of the teams are brothers Peyton and Eli Manning, this was a victory for older brothers everywhere. (Hey Jess!)
Jaguars 9, Raiders 19 — The team that everyone thought would be the worst team in the league before the year started beat the team everyone now thinks is the worst in the league.
49ers 3, Seahawks 29 — This was the most anticipated game of the weekend but it turned out to be a dud. Between the hour-long lightning delay filled with inane chatter and the lopsided score… I need to see Colin Kaepernick without an eyebrow to be happy.

The Good and the Ugly of Fantasy Football

Players that fantasy owners will be grouching about — Colin Kaepernick,  Maurice Jones-Drew, Frank Gore, and Larry Fitzgerald.

Players that fantasy owners will be crowing about — Marshawn Lynch, Michael Vick, Knowshown Moreno, and Pierre Garcon.

NFL Pregame Excess

As a sports fan, I am also a big fan of Sundays during the fall. I like nothing more than to have already had a weekend full of social events so that I can sit down on the coach and feel totally wonderful about watching football all day. As a fantasy football owner, I’ve also been known to have my laptop (and my phone, and my ipad, and whatever other screens I can find) propped open so that I can simultaneously follow my fantasy football team and as many of the non-televised games as possible. I’ve tried the NFL Red Zone channel a few times. Red Zone is a term which refers to an offensive team having the ball within 20 yards of the end-zone they are trying to score in. The Red Zone channel flips back and forth between games to show the most exciting parts of all of them — it will even split your screen into three or four games at times. I find it to be a dangerously hyperactive experience that leaves me feeling sort of shaky and not like I’ve enjoyed watching sports at all. But I understand the appeal of the Red Zone channel.

What I don’t understand is the appeal of NFL pre-game shows, so I was really happy to read the recent New York Times survey of them by Richard Sandomir. In it he describes the growth of the Sunday morning NFL shows as an inevitable but ridiculous consequence of the NFL’s popularity[1]

Starting Sunday, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. (all times Eastern), there will be 19 hours of pregame N.F.L.programming. Four of the new hours arrive courtesy of the CBS Sports Network, which is producing “That Other Pregame Show” next to the studio in Manhattan that is used by “The NFL Today,” the CBS broadcast network’s venerable pregame show. This flagrant addition of four hours, in one stroke, is excess piling on extravagance.

Keith Jackson, a retired legend of football broadcasting, was profiled recently in the LA Times by Chris Erskine. Erskine asked Jackson if he had any wisdom to impart on today’s broadcasters and Jackson replied, “They talk too damn much. You wear the audience out.” It’s likely Jackson was thinking about commentators during the game when he said that but I’d like to think he would feel the same about pre-game shows.

If there is one nice thing about all the NFL coverage and promotion, it’s that each channel has it’s own NFL theme song. These constants have become like Pavlovian conditional reflexes to me. They make me sprawl out, relax, maybe freak out a little about fantasy football, but mostly get ready to indulge myself in a day of sports. If you’re conditioned like I am, you might enjoy this inventive YouTube video by Ansel Wallenfang which I found on deadspin.com.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. And the low-cost of studio shows compared to other types of programming.↵

Cue Cards 9-11-13: Soccer

clapperboardCue 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.

Sport: Soccer
Teams: United States & Mexico
When: Tuesday, September 10
Context: A World Cup qualifying game
Result: The United States defeated Mexico 2-0
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • The United States has qualified for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil! This may seem old-hat to most people today because the U.S. has qualified for every World Cup since 1990. This string of seven straight qualifications is seventh best in the history of the World Cup and before 1990 the United States had not qualified for forty years.
  • There will probably be some people who question why other people like soccer. I just wrote another post answering that question.
  • A lot will be made of the location of the game. This is now the fourth straight time that the United States has beaten Mexico in a qualifying match played in Columbus Ohio. Each game has ended 2-0 in favor of the U.S. Read Grant Wahl’s excellent post-game piece in Sports Illustrated for more exploration of this topic.
  • Mexico isn’t out of the World Cup for the first time since 1994 yet… but it doesn’t look good. They fired their coach a few days before this game and might do it again after losing to the U.S.. World Cup qualifying is a little complicated (it somehow involves hexagons) but Mexico probably needs to win their two remaining games by as many goals as possible to have a realistic chance. Not making a World Cup in a soccer obsessed country (which basically all of them but the U.S. are) is a hard pill to swallow, so if you are hanging out with a friend who is a Mexican soccer fan today, be nice to her!

What’s Next: The next qualifying matches are on November 10 when the U.S. plays Jamaica and Mexico plays Panama.

Why Do People Like Soccer?

There’s a lot said about soccer by people who don’t like it: it’s too low scoring, it’s too slow, it’s too liberal, people are diving constantly, etc. Supporters of soccer or football as it’s called in the rest of the world call it “the beautiful game” and flock to it in record numbers. As someone who will happily watch or participate in virtually any sport from water polo to olympic handball to Australian rules football[1] I’m not particularly interested in advocating for one sport over another but I will list some of the reasons I think people like soccer.

— — —

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 Work? Why Do Soccer Players Dive so Much? What 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.

— — —

People Like Soccer Because it is Incredibly Hard to Score

This may be counter-intuitive because one of the complaints of many people about soccer is that it’s too low scoring but I think it’s a feature not a defect. One of the primary reasons why people enjoy watching sports in general is to watch athletes do things that they themselves could not do. For that reason, the harder it is to score in a game, the more wonder scoring should create in its fans when it does happen. And it is hard to score in soccer — this is what an attacking player in soccer faces:

  • First they take away the most dextrous limbs at your disposal, your arms. No using your hands or arms.
  • Then they put a ball on the field that, if you kick it hard enough, bends and dips in all sorts of fairly unpredictable ways.
  • Controlling this ball without using your hands means that your top speed with the ball is way slower than a defender can run without the ball.
  • Finally, they allow one player, the guy who is there with the sole purpose of preventing you from scoring, to use his hands.

All of these difficulties (and we didn’t even mention the offside rule) make scoring an impressive feat.

People Like Soccer Because of the Buildup Before the Release

One of the unexpected adjunct pleasures of watching a game where scoring is so rare is that by the time a team does score, it’s fans have built up an enormous store of pent up will, rage, and yearning that explodes into celebration to a degree unknown in higher scoring sports. According to Chris Anderson and David Sally of Slate Magazine the average number of goals in an English Premiere League soccer game is around 2.6. In a ninety minute game a team will usually score one or two goals. That’s a ton of time for fans root without having a celebratory release. Compare this to sports like tennis where the play rarely lasts 30 seconds or basketball where a team must shoot every 24 seconds and scores a little less than half the time it shoots. I can say that the goal the United States scored against Algeria after ninety scoreless minutes of a 2010 World Cup game that the U.S. needed to win was one of the most glorious sports moments of my life.

There are two downsides to this characteristic of soccer that I would be remiss not to mention: one is that the despair of seeing the opposing team score is equally acute. The second is that, mostly in the past in Europe but still once in a while in other parts of the world, the extremity of emotion combined with a heady mixture of alcohol, antagonism unrelated to sport, and unwisely designed stadiums can lead to rioting. In 1989 in Sheffield, England 96 people were killed and another 700 plus were injured in a riot of this sort. Called the Hillsborough disaster, these deaths did lead to significant reform in England.

People Like Soccer Because of its Teamwork and Fluid Play

This is probably also related to the advantages that not being able to use your hands give defense has over offense but soccer teams play more as a team than almost any other sport. It’s not unusual for there to be a string of ten or even fifteen passes that lead up to a goal. There are absolutely star players but even they exist within a team frame-work. For every star striker (player who exists solely to score) there is a star playmaker whose greatness is seen most clearly in the passes he or she makes to teammates. If you watch a soccer match in person, try to sit farther up than you imagine is ideal. From there you will get a good view of how the twenty-two players on the field move in swoops and cycles. The play continues this way almost unimpeded for ninety minutes. As the patterns that players make (overlapping runs on the wing, forwards retreating to pick up a pass, etc.) make their way into your brain as tactics instead of the aimless wandering you first might perceive them as, you will come to appreciate them.

Some Other Reasons People Like Soccer

  • More than other sports, national soccer teams have clearly defined historic styles that usually remain constant and which relate in some way to the national character (or at least are thought to.) The Brazilians dance with the ball like no one else and win, the Italians play rugged, dirty, defensive soccer and win, the British lose gallantly, the Germans play disciplined soccer and win a lot, and the Dutch play the most beautiful soccer in the world and lose consistently in the end.
  • There’s less difference between the men’s and women’s game than in most sports. Although I won’t often watch women’s basketball, I will watch the U.S. Women’s National team whenever it’s on. The rules of the game are almost identical and I get as much enjoyment from watching their games as I do the Men’s team.
  • The U.S. Men’s team is not that good. I’m one of those weird fans that enjoys watching bad teams, but even people who don’t have that problem might enjoy a break from being an overwhelming favorite like the U.S. is in many international competitions.
  • Most people in the world (even here in the United States) grew up playing soccer so they’ve internalized the game more than other sports.

There are some reasons why I think people like soccer. Do you like soccer? Why?

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Although I will admit I do not understand the rules that the name of that sport refers to↵

Cue Cards 9-9-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue 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.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Patriots 23, Bills 21 — Patriots were expected to win and did but the Bills made it interesting with their new coach and their rookie quarterback.

Dolphins 23, Browns 10 — A new coach didn’t do anything for the Browns who lost in a completely “meh” game.

Seahawks 12, Panthers 7 — The Panthers are probably not as good as this close game suggests.

Bengals 21, Bears 24 — The Cincinnati Bengals continue their long tradition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Vikings 24, Lions 34 — Adrian Peterson is amazing; the rest of the Vikings… not so much.

Raiders 17, Colts 21 — Raiders new quarterback Terrell Pryor exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations in this game and his team still lost.

Chiefs 28, Jaguars 2 — New Chiefs coach Andy Reid and quarterback Alex Smith start off their careers in Kansas City with a bang regardless of the lack of competition from the Jaguars.

Falcons 17, Saints 23 — A close game between two of the best teams in the league.

Buccaneers 17, Jets 18 — The Jets had all but lost this game, despite better than expected play from rookie quarterback Geno Smith, until a Buccaneer defender took a stupid penalty which led to a last second Jets field goal.

Titans 16, Steelers 9 — The Steelers season feels like it’s over before it even really started because of major injuries to Center Maurkice Pouncey and linebacker Larry Foote.

Packers 28, 49ers 34 — Packers waited all summer to avenge their playoff loss to quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers but failed in a very un-Inigo Montoya like way.

Cardinals 24, Rams 27 — A close, entertaining game between two moderately good but not great football teams.

Giants 31, Cowboys 36 — This high scoring game was brought to you by ugly, sloppy football, not skill and precision.

The Good and the Ugly of Fantasy Football

Players that fantasy owners will be grouching about — Marshawn Lynch, C.J. Spiller, Trent Richardson, Calvin Johnson

Players that fantasy owners will be crowing about — Colin Kaepernick, Reggie Bush, Victor Cruz, and Jared Cook

 

Cue Cards 9-8-2013: College Football & Tennis

clapperboardCue 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.

Sport: College Football
Teams: Innumerable
When: Saturday, September 7
Context: The second full Saturday of the season
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • The first couple weeks of the college football season are full of uneven match-ups between big, powerful schools and the weaker teams that they actually pay to visit their home field. Yesterday had its share of that type of game (Clemson vs South Carolina State, Louisville vs Eastern Kentucky, Rutgers vs. Norfolk State, etc.) but it had some really even and exciting games too.
  • Michigan beat Notre Dame 41 to 30. This was the marquee matchup of the night because it was between to traditional football powers with big fan-bases that are both expected to do well this year. Michigan’s quarterback, Devin Gardner has an interesting story. He was recruited in 2010 to play quarterback but never got much playing time. Last year he switched to Wide Receiver and was excelling at that position until the quarterback got injured and he had to quickly switch back. Now he’s the starting quarterback and he is fun to watch.
  • Georgia upset South Carolina, also 41 to 30. The story will be about Jadeveon Clowney, the star defensive end on the South Carolina team. He became a star last year after this play and is likely to be the first pick of the NFL draft next year. He hasn’t played very well so far this year though, and his team is not doing great either.

What’s Next: No more College Football until Thursday night when Texas Tech faces Texas Christian University at 7:30.

Sport: Tennis
Players: Novak Djokovic vs. Stanislas Wawrinka and Raphael Nadal vs. Richard Gasquet
When: Saturday, September 7
Context: The Semifinals of the U.S. Open
Result: Novak Djokovic defeated Stanislas Wawrinka 2-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 and Raphael Nadal defeated Richard Gasquet 6-4, 7-6, 6-2
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • The Djokovic-Wawrinka match was an epic. The five setter took four hours and nine minutes. A single game in the third set involved 30 points over 21 minutes — a game is won by the first player to get to four but you have to win by two, so these players were stuck at deuce for a long time! Djokovic is the #1 ranked player in the world, so he was expected to win but Wawrinka made a lot of fans yesterday by playing clever, valiant tennis.
  • Raphael Nadal, on the other side of the bracket, continued his dominant run to the finals. Brian Phillips (@runofplay) is one of my absolutely favorite people to follow on twitter. Here was his comment on Nadal from the quarterfinals but it would apply equally to yesterdays match:


What’s Next: The women’s final between Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka is on Sunday “not before” 4:30.  The men’s final will be on Monday.

How Does Scoring Work in Bowling?

One might ask why, on a day full of incredibly exciting sporting events like the U.S. Open men’s semifinals and the second full Saturday of college football, I am sitting on the couch writing about bowling. Let me explain.

There is a great bowling alley about 20 blocks from my apartment. Unlike most of the bowling alleys in New York city, this alley has remained true to the bowling alleys of my youth. It is slightly tawdry, mostly empty, and absolutely comfortable. My birthday was a few weeks ago and I decided to invite a few friends to join me for an afternoon of bowling and general tomfoolery. It was great fun but I was frustrated by my lack of bowling skills. I told myself that I would return some day when I had nothing else to do and bowl by myself to see if I could improve my score. I did this the other day and bowled by far the best game I’ve ever bowled! I scored a 163! This made me realize that I didn’t really understand how scoring works in bowling. While watching tennis and football today, I did some research…

I’m not the only one who spends most of his time trying to find the perfect ball?

It feels like the hardest part of bowling is understanding the score but it doesn’t need to be so complicated! Scoring in bowling[1] is simpler than it seems. The point of the game is to roll the bowling ball down the lane and knock as many of the pins down as efficiently as possible. A game consists of ten standard frames. In each frame the bowler is given two chances (like downs in football) to knock the pins down. If the bowler knocks all the pins down his or her first attempt, the second attempt or ball in that frame is discarded. At the end of each frame, no matter what has happened, the pins are reset to start the next frame. In a standard game, if the bowler never is able to knock all of the pins down in a frame, the score of the game will be exactly the number of pins knocked down.

So far, so good; two pins knocked down equals two points scored. Here’s where things get a tiny bit tricky[2] Knocking down all of the pins in a frame earns the bowler more chances to bowl. If the bowler knocks all of the pins down in their first roll (a strike) they get two bonus chances. If the bowler knocks all ten pins down but it takes two attempts to do it (a spare) they get one bonus roll. Bonus rolls are taken right after they are earned. Here’s how it works for a strike:

Frame 1 || Ball 1 — 10 pins knocked down (strike!) || Bonus Ball 1 || Bonus Ball 2

And here’s how it works for a spare:

Frame 1 || Ball 1 — any number of pins knocked down less than 10 || Ball 2 — all the remaining pins knocked down for a total of 10 || Only Bonus Ball

The score for the frame in both scenarios is simply the total number of pins knocked down in the standard frame and the bonus balls. Another way to think about this is that knocking all the pins down in a frame means the score for that frame will be made up of three rolls instead of two. Note how this is true for strikes (one standard plus two bonus) and spares (two standard plus one bonus.) This concept is important because it means there’s really only one rule to learn, not two!

This seems to suggest that a perfect game (a score of 300) would be achieved by throwing 30 straight strikes. That’s not true. Actually it only requires 12 straight strikes. That magical shrinking effect is created by transposing one frame on the next within the standard ten frames. Instead of this pattern:

Frame 1 || Strike || Bonus Ball 1 || Bonus Ball 2
Frame 2 || Strike || Bonus Ball 1 || Bonus Ball 2
Frame 3 || Strike || Bonus Ball 1 || Bonus Ball 2

Bowling follows this pattern:

Frame 1 || Strike || Bonus Ball 1 || Bonus Ball 2
Frame 2               || Strike            ||
Frame 3                                         || Strike 

The next roll after a strike counts as both the first bonus roll AND the first roll of the next frame. The second bonus roll after a strike will either be the second roll of the next frame OR the first roll of the one after that if the second frame is cut short by a strike. The single bonus roll after a spare is always the first roll of the next frame, regardless of the outcome of that roll.

If a bowler throws a strike in the last frame they are owed two bonus rolls but there is no standard next frame to overlap with. Instead the game reverts to how we originally explained it and the extra rolls are counted in the tenth frame regardless of their outcome. If there is a strike in the first bonus roll, the pins are reset before the second bonus roll.

Phew! There it is. There’s no multiplication, division, or subtraction[3] in bowling, just addition and one particularly tricky transposition.

Thanks for reading and if you’re ever in Queens, let’s bowl!

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. My Boston-proud girlfriend would want me to specify that this is Ten-Pin bowling and not any of the other regional variants of the game like Candle-Pin. For most of us, Ten-Pin is the only kind of bowling we know.↵
  2. If you know how bowling works, bear with me — I’m about to describe it in what I think is a very clever way… but which is going to seem wrong-ish initially to experienced bowlers.↵
  3. I hope!!↵

Cue Cards 9-7-2013: Baseball, Soccer, and Tennis

clapperboardCue 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.

Sport: Baseball
Teams: The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox
When: Friday, September 6
Context: The last month of the regular season
Result: The Red Sox won 12-8
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • As the daily forecast showed yesterday, it’s always a big deal when these rivals play. In this case the rivalry was augmented by the standings in the last month of the season. Boston is firmly in first place of the division and will make the playoffs and the Yankees are two and a half games out of the last wildcard playoff spot.
  • Yesterday made it two games in a row versus Boston that the Yankees have scored eight runs and been leading the game in the sixth inning and still lost. This is unusual and probably quite depressing to Yankees fans.

What’s Next: They play again today at 1:05. Not the most important sporting event because of all the college football on, but close.

Sport: Soccer
Teams: The United States and Costa Rica
When: Friday, September 6
Context: A World Cup qualifying game
Result: The United States loses 3-1
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • The Streak is over. After winning 12 games in a row, the United States has lost. Unfortunately this game was more important than the past six or seven because this one counts towards World Cup qualification. Still, the historic streak will cushion the blow for many fans of the team.
  • Three U.S. players got their second cumulative yellow card during World Cup qualifying games in this match. This triggers a one game suspension for them. One of the players was star striker Jozy Altidore who fouled someone needlessly right before the game was over. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann was critical of Altidore for this. 

What’s Next: The United States will face Mexico in another qualifying match on Tuesday. Win and they almost definitely qualify for the World Cup; lose and there will be much wringing of hands and worrying of brows.

Sport: Tennis
Players: Serena Williams vs. Li Na, and Victoria Azarenka vs. Flavia Pennetta
When: Friday, September 6
Context: The Semifinals of the U.S. Open
Result: Serena Williams defeats Li Na 6-0, 6-3 and Victoria Azarenka defeats Flavia Pennetta 6-4, 6-2
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • In this country at least, the stories will mostly be about Serena Williams and how dominant she looked. Serena is 31, far past the age that tennis players tend to start losing their ability to play at the highest level, and she just keeps on winning against other very good players convincingly.

What’s Next: The women’s final is on Sunday. The men’s semi-final matches are today when Raphael Nadal plays Richard Gasquet and Novak Djokovic plays Stanislas Wawrinka. Nadal and Djokovic are expected to win but watch out for Wawrinka who just upset Andy Murray soundly in three straight sets.

An Introduction to Football for the Curious

Football is America’s favorite sport. The season is anticipated, watched, obsessed over, and celebrated to an incredible extent. From the first week of September to the first week of February, football is almost unavoidable. Football is one of the least accessible sports for new viewers but we believe that with a little care and effort put into explaining it, it can be quite rewarding for a new or beginner viewer. Here is a collection of posts that may spark an interest or explain a long harbored question.

General Questions About Football

Why Do People Like Football
How do I Begin to Enjoy Football
How Should I Feel About the NFL Concussion Settlement
What is a Good Football Book

Rules, Terms, and Other Important Minutiae

How Does Scoring Work in Football
What’s a Down in Football
What is a Fumble in Football

Football Positions

What is a Quarterback in Football
What is a Running Back in Football
What is a Wide Receiver in Football
What is a Tight End in Football
What is an Offensive Lineman in Football
What is a Defensive Lineman in Football
What is a Linebacker in Football
What is a Defensive Back in Football

Fantasy Football

How Does Fantasy Football Work
What are Some Tips for Your First Fantasy Draft
Why Are People Obsessing About Fantasy Football Now

Happy watching! And please submit questions as you think of them. Getting questions is by far my favorite part of this blog and all the best posts come from your questions!

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer