Is basketball the most selfish sport?

Dear Sports Fan,

What do you think of the NBA Finals this year? People seem to love watching LeBron James almost single-handedly beat the Golden State Warriors. They think it’s an incredible performance by James, and it is, but it also seems to confirm something I’ve not liked about basketball for a long time — that the individual is so much more important than the team. Basketball seems like an incredibly selfish sport. Is basketball the most selfish sport?

Thanks,
Eduardo

Dear Eduardo,

The skills and effort of a single person make more of a difference to whether their team wins in basketball than any other sport but that doesn’t mean that the sport is selfish. To answer your question, let’s examine why one player has a bigger impact on basketball than any other sport and then discuss whether that inevitably leads to selfishness. First though, we need to talk briefly about race.

Basketball has a complicated racial history in this country. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the sport was dominated by Jewish players, mostly from New York City and other nearby cities. Our current professional league, the National Basketball Association, was created in 1946 and so it caught the tail end of the Jewish basketball dynasty. The first basket in NBA history was scored by New York Knick, Ossie Schectman. A documentary, The First Basket, was named after this hoop, and describes the Jewish influence on the sport and league. Throughout the 1950s, Jews were replaced by African-Americans and by the mid-60s, most teams had close to a 50/50 split. From there, the league drew a progressively larger percent of their players from African-American households until it reached its current status as the professional sports league with the highest percentage of African Americans. According to the Race and Ethnicity in the NBA Wikipedia page, the NBA in 2011 was 78% African American. The reason why all of this is important is that race and racial stereotypes color the way many people describe activities, including sports. For the past 50 years of professional basketball in this country, that has unfortunately meant that the default criticisms of basketball players have mimicked negative stereotypes of African-Americans. Basketball players have been accused of being lazy and on drugs and they’ve been called thugs and yes, selfish. Compare that to what was written about basketball during the Jewish dominated 1930s, “the game places a premium on an alert scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart-aleckness.” Lazy? Selfish? Scheming? Smart-aleckness? It’s clear that we have to guard against racial stereotypes when we talk about the nature of basketball. We’ll proceed carefully.

A single basketball player can have a bigger impact on their team than any player in any other major team sport. There’s a simple numerical reason for this. Basketball is played five on five. Soccer is 11 on 11, football 11 on 11, baseball is nine (or 10 if you’re playing with and count a designated hitter), and hockey is six on six. Furthermore, a basketball player is able to play a greater percentage of the game than in most other sports. Football players play only on offense or defense, and often not even for all of the plays in either phase. Baseball players are limited to hitting once in every nine at bats and starting pitchers only pitch once every five games. Hockey is so exhausting that players are only on the ice for 45 seconds to a minute at a time before substituting. Soccer is the only sport where more players play a higher percentage of the game, but with 11 on the field at a time, it’s harder for an individual to dominate like a LeBron James can in basketball. The last, and perhaps most meaningful reason why it seems like a single basketball player can have a bigger impact on her team than in any other sport is how deliberate and individual offense can be. Basketball teams can usually create a one on one matchup for an offensive player, called an iso (short for isolation) whenever they want. The Cavaliers often default to this approach with James. That’s simply not true in other team sports. Hockey and soccer are too fluid and chaotic to ever consistently transform their sport into a contest of individuals. Any offense in football is evidently reliant on teamwork. The center has to snap the ball to the quarterback. The offensive line needs to protect him. The quarterback needs a wide receiver to get open and to catch the ball. Each part obviously relies on the other. In basketball, it’s easier for a team to transform a team sport into a contest between their best player and the opponent’s best player.

Being selfish has to do with motivation, not action. Google’s dictionary defines selfish as “lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.” The best basketball player on a team may do more than everyone else, but if he does it with the team’s goal of winning in his mind; if she does it because she wants her team to win, then he or she cannot be said to be selfish. One reason why people might think of the best basketball player on a team as being selfish is because the roles on a basketball court are so amorphous. We don’t call a starting pitcher in baseball selfish for throwing more pitches than any of the relievers on the team. We don’t consider a quarterback in football to be selfish because he barely ever lets anyone else throw the ball. It’s only in soccer, hockey, and basketball, where the positions all kind of look the same that accusations of selfishness come up. We’ve also been considering the best player on the team. What about the fourth, fifth, and sixth best players? The ones that are out there primarily to rebound and set picks? Just by being in the NBA, it’s safe to assume they were the best player on their middle school, high school, and maybe even college teams. They once were the ones doing most of the scoring and now their primary goal is to support the best on their team. There are more of those players than there are stars and they clearly cannot be called selfish, given how they give themselves up for the team’s good. Of course, it is possible for a basketball player to be selfish. She can refuse to pass to her teammates. He can shoot almost every time he gets the ball. For what its worth, LeBron James does neither of those things. He’s an excellent and willing passer. James could easily be selfish if he wanted to though, he touches the ball on most of the Cavaliers’ plays. Selfish players have an easier time being selfish in basketball than in other sports but that doesn’t make basketball a selfish game. It just makes it one where it’s easier to tell when someone is being selfish.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

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

How to plan for the week of June 8-15, 2015

If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team starts their World Cup campaign with a game against Australia.

Tuesday: Four World Cup soccer games, including regional rivalries, France vs. England and Mexico vs. Colombia complement Game Three of the NBA finals in the evening. Both of the first two NBA Finals games have gone to overtime, so Game Three will either push this series into legendary status or be a totally boring blowout.

Wednesday: Women’s soccer takes the day off and men’s soccer comes through the door to fill our soccer needs for the day. The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team plays a friendly game against Germany. At night, the decidedly unfriendly Stanley Cup Finals continue. The series is 2-1 in favor of the Lightning heading into Game Four.

Thursday: Germany and Norway have combined to win half of the World Cups in women’s soccer history. Surprising, right? This time around, Germany is the favorite but Norway might still have some tricks up their sleeve. Both teams come off big wins in their first match: Germany 10-0 over Ivory Coast and Norway 4-0 over Thailand. The NBA Finals are on at night — Game Four of the series. As of now, we don’t know which team will be up two games to one, but that team will be looking to get a stranglehold over the series and the other will be looking to even it up.

Friday: Date night! Celebrate this week by watching the U.S. Women’s National team play against Sweden and their former coach, Pia Sundhage at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

Saturday: The college baseball World Series begins and Miami vs. Florida seems like it should be a heated matchup. Not as heated as the Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 which will either be the first elimination game for the Blackhawks to fight off or a game to see which team can go up three games to two. The best game of the Women’s World Cup schedule is probably Brazil vs. Spain.

Sunday: Tune into normal Sunday sporting events: Golf and NASCAR car racing. Or stick with seasonal events like the College World Series and Game Five of the NBA Finals.

Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.

June 8, 2015: The Anatomy of a Record Breaking Day

This blog set a personal record for views yesterday: 1,388!

I don’t normally write about Dear Sports Fan or its stats. In fact, it feels a little self-serving to do so, but in the spirit of enthusiasm and transparency, I want to invite you all to join me on the inside of this record breaking day.

1,388 is around 400 more than the previous record set on February 1, 2015, during this year’s Super Bowl. The first thing I wondered about was, “Why yesterday?” Yesterday was a good day for sports in general. The United States Women’s National Soccer Team played its first game of the 2015 World Cup, the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Finals had its third game of a possible seven, there were eight Major League Baseball games, and three college baseball Super Regional games, two of which went into overtime. Still, when it comes to great sports days, it’s hard to argue that yesterday was better than this past Saturday which featured the first day of the Women’s World Cup, the UEFA Champions League finals, the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Belmont Stakes which produced the first triple crown winner in horse racing since 1978. So why did Dear Sports Fan get more than twice the number of hits yesterday than it did Saturday?

One reason might be that I’ve been focused on June 8 for a long time now. I’m a big fan of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team and I also think they are a great team for casual or non-sports fans to get behind. (Quick aside. I chose yesterday’s game to use for the first ever Dear Sports Fan Viewing Parties Meetup and it was great. If you live in the Boston area, join us!) As I wrote yesterday, if national sports teams are supposed to say something about the country they represent, then the women’s national soccer team is the most positive and most accurate representation of the United States. Over the past month, I’ve written and published profiles of all 23 of the women on the team. I had been pleased with the response as I published them and I was even more pleased yesterday to see how people used them before, during, and after the game. In total, the 23 profiles were viewed 230 times. If you’re curious about which player received the most curiosity, here are the stats:

Another reason for the great statistics might be the excitement of the Stanley Cup Finals. Game Three in a good series, which this one is, should always be more exciting than Games One and Two. Sure enough, the real work-horses of the day were not the soccer posts, they were hockey posts. Hockey was the number one sport people used Dear Sports Fan to learn about yesterday, with a whopping 594 views. The three leading posts which accounted for over 95% of the hockey views were:

All three of those posts are relatively technical questions. If filed in a Hockey 101, 201, or 301 course, each would fit in a 200 or 300 level course, definitely not 100 level. This is great news, because it suggests that either people who don’t normally watch sports are still curious about pretty technical topics or that sports fans themselves sometimes get confused and need a reminder of how things work. Or both!

If you split everything Dear Sports Fan does between “Understanding” posts meant to explain how sports work and “Following” posts which help the casual or non-fan know what’s going on in sports at the moment, 74% of the views yesterday were in the Understanding category and 22% were Following posts. I’m still looking for ways to make the Following content more useful and attractive but this is probably around the right ratio for Dear Sports Fan as it grows. If you have ideas about what you’d like to read or listen to every day, let me know.

Although it sometimes seems like sports is an all-year, all-the-time avocation, sports do have seasons. Ice hockey, basketball, and soccer will all be wrapping up in the next few weeks and football season doesn’t start until late-August/early-September. That’s a lot of my content! Summer is going to be a real fallow season unless I concentrate on writing more about baseball. Here’s the by sport breakdown from yesterday:

  • Hockey – 42.80%
  • Soccer – 26.95%
  • Baseball – 8.57%
  • Basketball – 6.56%
  • General – 3.60%
  • Volleyball – 3.39%
  • Football – 1.87%
  • Other Sports – 0.72%
  • Tennis – 0.50%

It’s amazing how low football gets in the offseason considering how it dominates my stats when it’s in season.

Perhaps my favorite lesson from yesterday is that the long tail works. A notion popularized in 2008 by author Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail, the idea is that technology has made it easier than ever to sell a wider array of things at smaller quantities. In the context of a blog, the long tail is hard work. Four years of work on Dear Sports Fan and almost nine months of writing around three posts every day means that I am starting to accrue a large backlog of content. During yesterday’s record setting day, these posts contributed materially to the stats, even if each one of them was only viewed a little. There were 105 posts that received five or fewer views yesterday. These posts accounted for 188 views or 14% of the total. There were 67 posts that were viewed just once yesterday! This is thrilling because it’s a clear measure of how the daily grind contributes to the whole.

Thanks so much for reading and sharing Dear Sports Fan. This is a thrilling, albeit sometimes creaky roller-coaster ride to be on, and it’s great to know that I have wonderful people on it with me!
Ezra Fischer

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

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

What do the 20 most common strange soccer terms mean?

Soccer has always has an air of “otherness” in the United States. It’s the major world sport we are the worst at. Somehow in the 1960s or 70s, it became culturally associated with the liberal political leanings that often went along with an inclination towards international and particularly European ideas and culture. Unlike ice hockey, which is still primarily a Canadian and European sport, the best soccer leagues in the world do not reside in the United States. For all these reasons, soccer terminology remains opaque to many casual fans or non-fans of the sport. To help with this problem, here are definitions for the 20 most common strange soccer terms.

  1. Cap – Not part of a team’s uniform (or kit — bonus word!), a cap is an appearance on a country’s national team. The number of caps a player has is used as a sign of how experienced she is.
  2. Nil – Fancy sounding word for zero. Used by British and Anglophilic soccer fans.
  3. Pitch – The field of play. As in, the place you would pitch the ball from if you were playing baseball or cricket.
  4. False nine – Soccer has a traditional system or systems of numbers that refer to positions. Nine is the striker or forward. A team is said to be using a false nine when their farthest forward player frequently drops back farther than a normal striker would.
  5. Stoppage/injury/added time – Soccer is the only timed sport whose official clock is kept secret during the game. Only the ref knows how much time is really left. Stoppage time, injury time, and added time are all phrases used to refer to the period between when 45 minutes have elapsed from the start of a half to when the referee blows her whistle to end the game. The ref announces an estimate of how many minutes this will be at the end of each half but he is not held to it.
  6. 4-4-2 – A common soccer formation. In numerically expressed formations like this, the numbers refer to the players in each level of play, starting on defense, right after the goalie. 4-4-2 is four defenders, four midfielders, and two forwards.
  7. Clean sheet – Close to synonymous with a shutout in American sports. Credit for a clean sheet is usually given to a team’s goalie and defenders. Some may even have contractual bonuses for clean sheets.
  8. Switch the field – To pass the ball a long way across the field. An attacking team may switch the ball from the left side to the right if they aren’t having success creating offensive chances on the original side.
  9. Golazo – An unusually beautiful goal. The creativity and technical excellence of the goal matter more for qualification as a golazo than the importance of the goal.
  10. Nutmeg – When one player tricks another player by passing, shooting, or dribbling the ball between their opponent’s legs. The term’s derivation is disputed but one great theory involves spice counterfeiting.
  11. Parking the bus – When one team commits all their resources to defending. This can be a good strategy against a superior team. The U.S. Women’s National Team expects that a lot of their opponents will play this way against them.
  12. Advantage – If a team has a foul committed on them but would be disadvantaged by stopping the game, a referee can choose to play or call advantage and let the play continue. If the foul warrants a yellow or red card, the ref can give the offending player her card the next time the game stops.
  13. Professional foul – An intentional foul committed by a player (usually a defender) to prevent a scoring chance. The best professional fouls are ones that anticipate the action by enough to avoid being penalized specifically for taking a scoring chance away from the other team.
  14. Through ball – A pass that is designed to go behind the opposing team’s defensive line where it can be picked up by a teammate of the player passing the ball.
  15. Tiki-taka – A style of play, popularized by the Spanish men’s national team, that relies on high volume, relatively safe short passes to move the ball and maintain possession. World soccer seems to be at the tail end of a time when this style was ascendant.
  16. Woodwork – The goals may no longer be made out of wood, but the goal posts (sides) and cross bar (top) are still referred to by their original material. A shot that hits the goal may be said to leave the “woodwork” ringing.
  17. Work rate – An imaginary stat that refers to how hard a player is playing. Technology has recently made it possible to quantify part of this by tracking how far each player runs during a game. Central or defensive midfielders usually have the highest work rates and sure enough, they usually run the farthest.
  18. Overlap – A common track a player might run in relative to her teammate who has the ball. Overlapping or running an overlap is to run between the player with the ball and the sideline, from behind the player to ahead of her. This serves to give the player with the ball a passing option and also to stretch the defensive players farther away from each other by forcing one of them to follow the player making the overlap run.
  19. Booking – When a referee disciplines a player by giving him a yellow or red card. Two yellows in one game or a single (called a straight) red means immediate expulsion from the game. After being expelled, the player’s team has to play the rest of the game down a player, they cannot add a substitute.
  20. Cynical – A play that violates unwritten rules. On offense, this usually applies to flagrant simulation or diving. On defense, this is normally a professional foul. A foul need not be violent to qualify as cynical.

Meet the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team

International sports are said to be one window into a country’s character. It’s a lovely idea, but there’s a giant, obvious problem with it — which national team are we talking about? Sometimes, during some eras, in some countries, you might have a style of competition that’s universal across all sports, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, a national basketball team will play differently from a national ice hockey team, and the men’s version of a team will play differently from the women’s. The question becomes, which team and narrative do you want to choose. If the way a national team plays says something about your country, what do you want it to say? If you like the idea of the United States as the world’s sole superpower, root for the men’s or women’s national basketball teams. If you like the picture of the United States as it was in the early 20th century, its potential as a world power still untapped, root for the men’s soccer team. If you want a representation of the United States that is powerful but still struggling to its peak, root for the U.S. men’s ice hockey team. Plus, that way, you get to (sports) hate Canada.

Heading into the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team represents the best combination of accuracy and positivity of all United States national teams. This team was a dominant power in the 1990s (check) but has not had a big victory on the world stage since 1999 (check). It is still thought of as the world’s most powerful team (check) but the second and third and fourth strongest countries are breathing on its neck, not materially behind (check). You can root for this team without feeling sheepish because they are so much better than their competition and without feeling hopeless because they have no chance. After sixteen years without a World Cup victory, it’s not selfish to feel like the team deserves a victory and it’s not paranoid to be afraid that they won’t get it. This team is basically perfect to root for.

To help prepare you to root for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team, we published short profiles of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews strove to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Goaltenders

The goaltender or goalie is the only player on the field who can use her hands, a goalie’s task is to organize the defense and prevent the other team from scoring however she can. It’s a position for the reckless, the non-conformists, the obsessive, and the very brave. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Hope Solo – Widely considered the best goalie in the world. She’ll be looking to cement that title with a World Cup title.

Ashlyn Harris – The team’s second choice in goal. When Solo was suspended this past winter, Harris played and played well.

Alyssa Naeher – Break glass if needed. Naeher would start at goal for most of the countries in the world. For the U.S., she’s third in the order.

Defenders

Defenders are strong, physical, and extraordinarily reliable. An attacker who makes 17 mistakes and has one success is a hero, a defender who has 17 successes and makes one mistake is the opposite of a hero. Some defenders help out on offense by making runs up the field or by acting as targets for corner kicks and other set pieces. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Megan Klingenberg – An offensive minded left fullback, Klingenberg may be the fastest woman on the team. Watch for her to create offensive chances by moving up the field and playing crosses into the penalty box.

Becky Sauerbrunn –  A true defender’s defender, Sauerbrunn is used to being an ironwoman. Don’t expect her to leave the field during the World Cup.

Julie Johnston – Johnston broke into the starting lineup this winter with a series of strong defensive and offensive performances. She scored three goals in three successive games, all on runs to the near post on set pieces.

Ali Krieger – Krieger career has seemed cursed by a series of major injuries, most recently a concussion. If she can stay healthy, she’ll provide veteran play from her right defensive position.

Kelley O’Hara – O’Hara can play every position on the field and play it well. We could see her as a defensive or midfield sub.

Christie Rampone – The last active U.S. National Team player who played in the 1999 World Cup. Until an injury this winter gave Julie Johnston the opportunity to take over, Rampone was expected to start. She’s still capable of playing quality time if needed. If not, she’ll provide valuable leadership from the bench.

Whitney Engen – A likely mainstay of future teams, Engen is unlikely to play in this World Cup.

Lori Chalupny – Comes off the bench as an outside defender. If Klingenberg or Krieger falter, Chalupny will be the first choice to replace them.

Midfielders

Midfielders run and run and run and then run some more. Asked to play a role in every phase of the game, midfielders are like the connective tissue of a soccer team. It’s also the most varied position. Some midfielders focus on offense, some on defense, some on scoring, and some on passing. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Lauren Holiday – A playmaking midfielder who has been asked to play a holding or defensive midfield role on this team. Look for her to jumpstart the offense anyway with inventive long passes.

Megan Rapinoe – Rapinoe is one of the most technically gifted players in the world. She has amazing vision, precision passing ability, and a penchant for coming through when the team needs her the most.

Carli Lloyd – Lloyd is the hardest working woman in soccer. She’ll run for 90 minutes and more. She’s physically dominant. Lloyd looks to score from outside and possesses the rocket-powered feet to do it.

Christen Press – A gifted striker forced back into the midfield by the USA’s unprecedented logjam at forward. Press thrives at midfield, making long attacking runs from her deeper position.

Shannon Boxx – Boxx was Lloyd before Lloyd was. Now, she’s a veteran who can be counted on to  provide a reasonable facsimile of her old self for short periods.

Morgan Brian – The youngest player on the team, and the only college player, Brian would be the driving force on most teams. For this team, she’s probably going to be the first midfielder off the bench, able to replace any midfielder well.

Tobin Heath – Heath is one of the most talented and creative dribblers in the world. When she gets into the game, watch for her to run at opposing defenders. They’ll need two or three defenders to stop her.

Heather O’Reilly – O’Reilly has a knack for goal scoring. If she sees action in the World Cup, she’ll have a nose for goal.

Forwards

Forwards or strikers care about only one thing in the world, scoring. Even with that singular goal, forwards have a few different ways of going about it. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Amy Rodriguez – The forgotten forward, Rodriguez is an all-around proficient striker who can score in every way possible. At 28, she’s perfectly placed to step in if the older Wambach or younger Leroux, Morgan, or Press falter.

Sydney Leroux – Leroux scares the heck out of opposing defenses with her speed and limitless will. Make one wrong move on defense and she’s behind you with the ball in scoring position.

Alex Morgan – This was supposed to have been Morgan’s World Cup but a series of ankle and knee injuries put that in question. If she’s healthy, she should be a prime weapon.

Abby Wambach – Wambach is the GOAT — the Greatest of All Time. But she’s never won a World Cup, and at 35, this will be her last chance. When she’s got it going, she’s still the best striker in the world. The question will be, how much does she have left?

What is a goalie or goaltender in soccer?

Goalie or goaltender is a distinctive position in every sport that has it. Ice hockey goalies stay on the ice for the entire game while their teammates substitute in and out almost constantly. Lacrosse goalies have enormous sticks. Water polo goalies are the only players who can legally touch the bottom of the pool. None of these distinctions come close to a goalie’s distinctiveness in soccer. Goaltenders in soccer are the only players who can use their hands. Although this privilege is limited to when a goalie is within her own penalty box, it’s sets them apart so much that they’re required to wear distinctively colored shirts to make it easier for refs to tell them apart.

You might think the enormous advantage of being able to use one’s hands would make goalie the easiest position to play. Not true! The extra privileges of the goalie in most sports are a recognition of how difficult their job is and nowhere is this more true than in soccer. The first thing a soccer goalie has to come to terms with is the size of her task… literally! A soccer goal is 24 feet wide and eight feet tall. That’s an enormous area for a single person to cover. It’s too much, even for the most athletic goalie to be able to leap from the center of the goal, all the way to the side to stop a shot. So, the smart soccer goalie uses angles and anticipation. If an attack is coming from the right, they move towards it; out and to the right. From the shooter’s perspective, this has the effect of effectively making the goalie a larger obstacle which is harder to shoot around. If this doesn’t make intuitive sense, think about having to hit a barn with a tomato but needing to avoid the barn door. It’s pretty easy but it would be a lot harder if someone detached the door and stood it up right in front of you. You’d have to throw the tomato over the door or around the door. Same size door, different size challenge.

The issue with playing the angles is that if a goalie guesses wrong or if an attacker is able to pass to a teammate on the other side of the field, the goalie will most likely be too far out of position to recover in time to make a save. Some goalies play deeper in their net and trust their athleticism and reaction time. Goalies need to have incredibly good judgement and fast, decisive, decision-making skills. One wrong move could be one too many. The margin of error for goalies in soccer, because it is such a low scoring sport, is tiny and the consequences for error are enormous. Take poor Robert Green, for instance. In 2010 he was one of the best 40 people in the entire world at his profession yet all he will be remembered for (literally, it’s going to be the first line of his obituary one day) will be this momentary lapse against the United States in the World Cup.

Beyond simply getting in the way of the ball when it’s shot at the goal, goaltenders have a number of other responsibilities. If you watch soccer on television, you’ll often see shots of goalies screaming at their teammates. They’re not cursing them out or at least, they’re not  just cursing them out. Goalies are responsible for organizing their teammates on defense. Any single defender may have to turn his back to one side of the field or the other, or may be too far forward and miss what’s going on behind them. From their position closest to the goal, only goaltenders can see everything that’s going on. It’s their job to communicate.

The challenges and pressure that goalies face seems to attract or create two types of people: those who compensate through obsessive behavior and those who compensate through aberrant behavior. Almost all goalies are one of the two types, some are both. This is true across all sports. Hockeygrrl lists some of the more well-known obsessive behavior in her post about hockey goalies, including Patrick Roy’s refusal to let anything, even ice shavings into his net, Henrik Lundqvist’s ritual of tapping the wall the same number of periods he’s played so far in the game, and my new favorite, Jocelyn Thibault’s tradition of pouring “water over his head precisely six-and-a-half minutes before a game began.” For the more far-out their behavior on the other side of the spectrum, see Colombian soccer goalie Rene Higuita, who was literally nicknamed “the lunatic” and hockey goalie Ilya Bryzgalov who once responded to a question about the offensive threats on an opposing team by saying that he was “only afraid of [a] bear.”

It's time to get serious about the Women's World Cup. The world is.

The Women’s World Cup begins today in Canada with the host nation playing against China at 6 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1. If you haven’t been following women’s soccer, now is the time to start. You won’t be the only one. The tournament is receiving an unprecedented amount of coverage and attention. Or should I say, it’s receiving an unprecedented amount of coverage and attention for a women’s sporting event. For reason’s that escape me, when it comes to sports, women always get the short end of the stick. Less money, less attention, less adulation, less of everything. That’s starting to change and this World Cup is proving it in a number of ways:

  • Every game will be televised live on Fox, Fox Sports 1, or Fox Sports 2. This is being viewed by many people as a test run for Fox’ coverage of the next few men’s World Cups, which they bought the rights to. Suffice it to say that they’re throwing every resource they have at the tournament to make it enjoyable and exciting.
  • The next edition of EA Sports’ soccer video game, FIFA 16, (part of the world’s best selling video game series of all time,) will feature women’s soccer teams. This may not sound like much, but playing video games is one of the key ways that I’ve gotten into and learned about sports. Having playable female characters is a big step towards treating soccer like something that is equally male and female. The fact that EA Sports did it without any kind of annoying over-compensating pink girl’s mode makes it even better.
  • One of the great things about the video game is that boys and men who love soccer will end up playing as women, learning about the players, and growing into fans of the teams. As sparse as resources for women who love women’s soccer have been, what’s available for men who follow women’s soccer has been even less. Until this year, a man who wanted to buy a U.S. Women’s National Team jersey had to either buy a youth size or a woman’s size shirt. The women’s jerseys were not made in men’s sizes. The other option a male fan had was to buy a men’s jersey and customize it to have one of the woman player’s names and numbers on the back. This year, for the first time ever, NIKE is selling the women’s jerseys in men’s sizes! You can buy a legit Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, or Sydney Leroux jersey or customize your own.
  • Finally, the sports media has also been taking the tournament more seriously than ever. Deadspin has run an impressive series of World Cup previews. Five Thirty Eight, in true Five Thirty Eight fashion, created and beautifully illustrated a model predicting the likely outcomes of the World Cup, and then had Allison McCann write a survey of the tournament that interpolated the model without relying on it too heavily.

We’ve been taking the Women’s World Cup seriously since this blog started four years ago. This year around, we published short, gender-free profiles of all 23 members of the U.S. Women’s National Team. We’ll be rooting for them and writing about the tournament for the next month. Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or on email:

Thanks for reading and enjoy the tournament!