2015: USA Sevens Rugby World Series

In 2015 Dear Sports Fan will be previewing the biggest sporting event of the year in each of the 50 states in the United States plus the district of Columbia. Follow along with us on our interactive 2015 US.

Nevada — USA Sevens Rugby World Series

Rugby — February 13-15, 2015 —  on NBC, NBC Sports Network, and Universal Sport.

You know rugby, right? It’s like American football but the players don’t wear pads and you’re only allowed to pass the ball backwards. Also, play doesn’t really stop all the time like it does in football — it’s more of a fluid game, like soccer or basketball or hockey. It’s played mostly by crazy people from Australia and New Zealand. Well, rugby sevens is an exciting version of rugby played with half the number of people on the exact same size field. By reducing the number of players without changing the size of the field, rugby sevens play becomes way faster and higher scoring than it’s full-size counterpart. The sport is growing quickly and will be a medal-sport for the first time in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. One of the sport’s biggest organized leagues is a series of nine international tournaments played over the course of a year. This weekend, one of the nine tournaments will be hosted in Nevada at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. It’s the only one of the nine held in the United States.

Rugby Sevens has an interesting history. Many people believe it is the future of rugby but that doesn’t mean it is a recent invention. It’s current popularity could be said to have started in 1973 when the first international rugby sevens tournament was held as part of the sport’s 100 year birthday celebration. That’s right, the sport began in the late 1800s in Scotland! Over most of its history, it’s been thought of primarily a training ground for players to develop skills that they could use in traditional rugby. Today, this is less true than ever. Sevens is different enough and popular enough that few players cross from one sport to the other.

For a beginner viewer, the sport has some real advantages. It’s simpler to follow than the fifteen person version and it’s very, very fast. A game consists of two seven minute halves with only a one minute halftime break. In the time it takes to watch one quarter of American football, you could watch two whole games of Rugby Sevens. The championship match is a little longer, but even that is only two ten minute halves separated by a two minute half-time. There’s enough hitting to make you feel like you’re watching an extreme sport but surprisingly little of the disgusting bone/ligament/brain injuries that make watching football tough these days. Give it a try!

What’s the plot?

The stakes for this year’s Sevens World Series are high. The top four teams receive automatic qualification into the 2016 Olympics. Countries that don’t get these spots will still be able to get a spot in the Olympics by doing well in regional international tournaments or, failing that, another global qualification tournament. Still, this is the first chance to qualify and it’s a prized one. After four tournaments, South Africa is a surprise first place team, followed closely by New Zealand (which has won 12 of the 15 championships ever), Fiji, and Australia. Australia is trailed closely by the England team who are only two points behind them. The United States is in eighth place. For our team, that’s actually a pretty good showing so far. They’ve never finished better than 10th in a Rugby Sevens World Series. The United States is not a traditional rugby power-house by any means but a good effort in this tournament at home would give them confidence going into the other opportunities to qualify for the Olympics.

The tournament works a little bit like the soccer World Cup. It begins with a round-robin group stage composed of groups of four teams each. Teams play three games in the group stage, one against each of the others in their group, and receive three points for a win, two for a tie, and one for just showing up. At the end of the group stage, the top two teams advance to the next round. The next round begins with eight teams that play single elimination games. Then there are four and finally two left who play for the championship. In this tournament, the groups are as follows:

  • Group A: New Zealand, Fiji, Wales, Samoa
  • Group B: England, Kenya, Argentina, Canada
  • Group C: South Africa, USA, Portugal, Japan
  • Group D: Scotland, Australia, France, Brazil

If you want to follow the United States team, they’ll be playing Japan at 7:22 p.m. ET and Portugal at 10:18 p.m. ET on Friday, February 13 on Universal Sports and South Africa at 3:40 p.m. ET on Saturday, February 14 on NBC. The elimination rounds will also be televised and hopefully the USA will be playing in them. NBC has coverage on Sunday, February 15 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. ET when NBC Sports Network takes over.

Who are the characters?

Carlin Isles — Isles is the star of the USA men’s Eagles Seven. He’s also representative of how the United States hopes to become a power in this sport — by stealing athletes from other sports. Isles was primarily a sprinter until just a few years ago when he gave up his dream (and a very reasonable dream, it was) of qualifying for the Olympics as a sprinter. Instead, he got interested in rugby and quickly became an extraordinary member of the USA team. With the inclusion of the sport into the 2016 Olympics, he may get his shot after all, just in a different sport than he expected. Rugby players are fast but virtually none of them are as fast as Isles. Once he gets even an inch of space on the field, it’s hard for anyone to keep up with him and no one is going to catch him.

Here’s a highlight reel of great Carlin Isles plays (it’s got a vaguely NSFW Kanye West music, so be warned). Watch for the shrugs of despair from Isles opponents as he turns the corner on them and they realize he’s just too fast:

Grantland did a short biographical video on Isles that’s also worth working:

The New Zealand All Blacks — I mentioned that New Zealand kind of runs this sport, right? They’ve won almost all the world cups but they’re not in first place this year. They’re called the all blacks because their traditional uniform is, you guessed it, all black, and has been since 1905. In addition to being famous for winning, they’re also famous for performing a Maori Haka dance before each match. Here’s a video of them performing it in the rain before a game last year… shirtless:

Who’s going to win?

Oh, who knows. Probably New Zealand. Maybe South Africa or Australia or Fiji. Possibly France. Or, you know what? How about the United States? Let’s do it!!

What happened on Wednesday, February 11, 2015?

  1. Chelsea stays ahead: It looked like second place Manchester City might get closer to first place Chelsea yesterday when, through almost 90 minutes of soccer, Chelsea was even with Everton and Manchester City was winning their game 4-1. Chelsea scored right at the end of the game, just seconds after Everton went down to ten men, on a shot that went through about three people’s legs before beating goalie Tim Howard. Chelsea won 1-0 and retains their lead over Manchester City in the standings.
    Line: Soccer is brutal sometimes. Imagine playing well against a better team and holding them from scoring for 88 minutes only to lose in the last two?
  2. Penguins explode: Not really, of course, that would be horrible whether we’re talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team or actual penguins. The hockey team bearing that name did explode offensively in their 4-1 win last night over the Detroit Red Wings.
    Line: When the Penguins are at full strength, watch out!
  3. LeBron and Co. beat the Heat: In LeBron James’ second game against the team he played on for the last few years, the Miami Heat, he got his first victory. The Heat were without Dwayne Wade, who sat out the game with an injury, and they simply couldn’t score enough to stay with the Cavaliers who beat them 113-93.
    Line: After the Heat won the first matchup, it makes sense that this one would mean more to LeBron and the Cavaliers than to the Heat.
  4. Tiger Woods says the obvious: Tiger Woods has not been playing golf very well lately. In his last two tournaments, he shot his worst round of golf ever (professionally, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he played better as a kid) and then had to pull out of a tournament with a back injury. Yesterday he announced he wouldn’t come back until he felt he could play better and more safely. Which is pretty much the same thing as saying, “I will come back when I can compete.” Which is obvious. Still, this was big news.
    Line: You won’t come back until you can come back? Got it.

Sports Forecast for Thursday, February 12, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • NHL Hockey – St. Louis Blues at Tampa Bay Lightning, 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Cleveland Cavaliers at Chicago Bulls at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • Skiing – Alpine World Championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado, 4 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • And more!

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 is a power play in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a power play in hockey?

Thanks,
Deborah

Dear Deborah,

Hockey has one of the more innovative ways of penalizing a player and a team for committing a foul. When a player commits a foul, a ref raises his arm, and as soon as a member of the player’s team gets control of the puck, the ref blows a whistle to stop play. The offending player is then escorted to a small, isolated compartment on the side of the rink opposite from where the teams sit, called the penalty box. Depending on the nature of the foul, he must remain there for some time, usually two or five minutes, or potentially until the other team scores a goal. While she is in the box, her team must play without her and they don’t get to simply replace her. They have to play shorthanded or “down a man,” which usually means they have four players plus a goalie against the other team’s five players plus a goalie. On rare occasions, one team may play with four players plus a goalie versus the other team’s three. Five on three is also possible, but the rules won’t allow things to get any more lopsided than that. The team that is has more players on the rink has a power play.

Power plays are extremely important in hockey because it is easier to score during one than in the normal course of “full strength” play. During a power play, the team with the extra player is often able to keep possession of the puck in their offensive zone and pass amongst themselves until they are able to get a good shot on goal. This is much more difficult without having the man advantage. Teams also have special combinations of players who they play during a power play. These units are, intuitively, called power play units. They’re usually made up of the best three offensive forwards on the team and the best two offensive defensemen although it’s not uncommon for a team to play with four forwards and one defenseman while they are on the power play. If a team choses to do this, one forward plays in the position a defenseman would normally be, up near the blue line that marks the dividing line between the offensive zone and the neutral zone. This gives the team more scoring punch on their power play unit but may also leave them vulnerable to a counter-attack.

20% is generally considered to be the dividing line between a good and a very good power play unit. A team that scores on more than 20% of their power play attempts is an extraordinarily good team with the man advantage. There are currently eight of the 30 NHL teams whose power play percentages are above 20%. Most of the rest of the teams range between 15% and 20% although there are three woeful teams that average a goal on less than 15% of their power play attempts. It’s no coincidence that two of these three teams have the two worst records in the league. It’s important to be good at converting power play attempts into goals.

When hockey games are at their most exciting and the stakes are at their highest, power plays begin to loom very large in fans’ minds. If your team is trailing, you hope desperately to be awarded a power play. If your team is winning, you just want the players on your team to play clean hockey and stay out of the penalty box. Once a penalty has been called, fans are launched into an even higher state of nervousness. If your team is the one with the power play, you barely make a sound for two minutes, except to scream pleadingly for a goal. If your team is the one that is shorthanded and killing the penalty off, then you just don’t breath until your team clears the puck away from their goal.

Power plays are wonderful theater and they’re also a great way to discourage foul play. I don’t know of many sports other than hockey that uses this type of deterrence (soccer has a similar rule for players who get red cards, but their banishment is permanent. I think water polo and possibly lacrosse have similar rules but with so many more players playing, the loss of one is less impactful) but I think more sports should adopt it. I recommended that football look into it during my epic series of articles on how to fix football’s brain injury problem. Until then, we’ll just keep enjoying it in hockey!

Hope this helps,
Ezra Fischer

What is a nutmeg in soccer?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a nutmeg in soccer? And why does it have such a crazy name?

-Naomi

Dear Naomi,

Nutmeg is a colorful term used in soccer that refers to when one player directs the ball intentionally between the legs of another player. It’s similar to the ice hockey term, “five hole” which we wrote about earlier this week but the two are not interchangeable. Whether it’s a shot that goes between the goalie’s legs on its way into the net, a pass to a teammate that goes between a defenders legs, or if a player dribbles literally right through another player and keeps control of the ball, getting nutmegged is one of the most humiliating moments in soccer. Soccer is a very territorial sport. I often think of soccer teams as being made of a semi-viscous material that stretches between nodes centered on each player. To score in soccer, you need to find a point between players where the material is thin enough to be punctured. As an attacking team gets closer and closer to a defender, the material gets thicker and harder to break through. Going directly through a player is usually too difficult to even be worth attempting. A nutmeg is the ultimate breakdown of this rule. A defender who gets nutmegged has failed his or her team in the most basic way.

The derivation of the term nutmeg is a mystery with several plausible solutions. The Wikipedia entry on the topic and a 2005 article from The Guardian list the same three possibilities:

  • That it comes from the slang use of the word “nuts” to mean testicles. If the soccer players are male, then a nutmeg will involve the ball traveling directly under the nutmegged players nuts. It’s also plausible to think of it as a term of admiration referring to the brazenness of the player making the attempt.
  • The second possible derivation is that it stems from English rhyming slang that replaced the word “leg” with “nutmeg.” In this case, nutmeg refers to what the ball passes between instead of underneath.
  • The last possibility and the one that The Guardian likes the best, is that nutmeg gained its soccer meaning from an 1870s practice of deceit on the part of spice importers who would hide some wooden carvings in their shipments of nutmeg to lower their cost and raise their profits. This practice led to use of the word nutmeg to generally mean, “to be tricked or deceived, especially in a manner which makes the victim look foolish” which is a perfect match for how it feels to get nutmegged in soccer.

Whichever derivation you prefer, it’s interesting to see how many of the words for this action in other languages also have some element of food in them. All according to the same Wikipedia article:

  • In Hispanic America there are four words for nutmeg and three of them have a food element – caño which means spout, ordeñar which means milk, and cocina which literally means kitchen.
  • In Jamaica, it’s called salad.
  • Brazil has three words for it and one of them, rolinho, means little roll.
  • In Hungarian, the word for nutmeg is kötény which means apron.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a real blog post if I didn’t suggest another, totally unfounded, theory about nutmeg. Getting nutmegged is harmful in many ways. It’s humiliating to be faked out and beaten so badly. It’s also bad, potentially very damaging for the team to have allowed a player to go through what should have been a defensive stronghold. Perhaps nutmeg was an apt word to use because it too can be harmful. Nutmeg is not only a spice, it’s also a reasonably strong drug. A New York Times article from 2014 on the subject describes the experience of consuming too much nutmeg as “not exactly comatose, but… really sluggish.” Playing the ball through an opponent’s legs is the most effective way to make him or her look “not exactly comatose, but really sluggish.”

Could the use of the term nutmeg in soccer come from the experience or observation of a person suffering through a bad nutmeg trip? Who knows! It’s fun to think about. While you ponder, enjoy a highlight reel of some amazing nutmegs.

Thanks for asking,
Ezra

 

What happened on Tuesday, February 10, 2015?

  1. A high scoring, exciting soccer game: That’s right, I know soccer has a reputation for being a little bit dull and low scoring. Not true! At least, not true in yesterday’s game between Tottenham and Liverpool. The game went back and forth and back and forth until Liverpool finally won it 3-2 thanks to a late Mario Balotelli goal. The game was extremely important to the English Premier League standings. Liverpool climbs to seventh place, only one point behind Tottenham.
    Line: I wish all the soccer deniers could have watched that game!
  2. Power Plight: A power play in hockey is when one team, because of a foul committed by the other team, has one or more than one more players on the rink than their opponents. It’s a big opportunity to score a goal, which is why it is all the more depressing for the team with the extra player when they let in a goal. That happened twice last night to the Boston Bruins during their 5-3 loss to the Dallas Stars.
    Line: Terrible night for the Bruins on the power play.
  3. Harden, James Harden: When you look at the box score of a basketball game, one of the things it shows you quickly is who, from each team, had the most points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. When you look at the box score for last night’s game between the Houston Rockets and Phoenix Suns, the only name you see on the Rockets side is James Harden. He led his team with 40 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists, and three steals, and tied for team lead with two of his teammates who each had one block. That’s quite a game from him as the Rockets beat the Suns 127-118.
    Line: There’s a reason that people are talking about James Harden for Most Valuable Player (MVP) this year.

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • British Premier League Soccer – Everton at Chelsea, 2:45 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NHL Hockey – Detroit Red Wings at Pittsburgh Penguins, 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NBA Basketball – Miami Heat at Cleveland Cavaliers at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Clippers at 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • And more!

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 is a buzzer beater?

Dear Sports Fan,

What exactly is a buzzer beater? I know it’s a last second shot, but how last second does it have to be? And is it only in basketball? Why?

Thanks,
Wesley

Dear Wesley,

Nothing reminds people that sports are a constructed universe more than the clock that counts inexorably towards the end of a game. In most timed sports, like basketball, football, and hockey, this clock is present in the arena and on television screens throughout the entire game. In soccer, the official time is kept only by the referee, and in untimed sports like tennis and basketball, time takes a back seat to sets, games, or innings. Each sport that has a clock deals with what happens when the clock runs out a little differently. Hockey rules simply that when the clock hits zero at the end of a period or game, the action ends. If the puck is an inch from crossing the goal-line when the clock hits zero, there is no goal. As befits football’s nature as a set of successive plays, football rules dictate that time only matters at the start and end of plays. If there is a second on the clock, that is enough time for another play. If there is no time at the end of a play, (with an exception for penalties) there will be no next play. The clock hitting zero during a play makes no difference to the result of that play whatsoever. Basketball has a different way of deciding what happens when a clock hits zero.

There are two clocks in basketball: the game clock and the shot clock. The game clock starts at 12 minutes for each National Basketball Association (NBA) quarter or at 20 minutes for each college basketball half. The shot clock starts at 24 seconds in the NBA and 35 in college and resets each time possession of the ball switches from one team to another or if a shot hits the rim. The shot clock was introduced in the NBA in 1954 in order to force teams to shoot the ball more frequently. Basketball wants shots! As part of the shot clock rule, the NBA decided that instead of requiring a shot to go in or hit the rim before the 24 second clock hit zero, they would enforce it from the moment the ball left a player’s hand. Once the ball is in the air, flying towards the hoop, time is effectively no longer an issue. Basketball teams have 24 seconds (or 35 in college) to shoot the ball, not to make a basket or hit the rim.

This is a natural rule for the shot clock. After all, the shot clock was not put in place to stop play every 24 or 35 seconds, it was intended to create a fast-moving, offensive, and continuous game. When the same logic is applied to the game clock, it’s a little bit more jarring. When applied to the game clock, it means that a ball, flying through the air, after the clock hits zero, is still in play as long as the player who shot it let go before time expired. This is the essence of a buzzer beater! It’s a shot that continues after the game clock has hit zero.

There are, as you might expect, a few wrinkles to how this term is used. First, although a buzzer sounds whenever a shot clock or game clock hits zero (thus the “buzzer” moniker), people almost always use the term to refer to the game clock hitting zero at the end of the fourth quarter. Second, although buzzer beater literally should be a shot that leaves a player’s hands when there is time left on the clock and goes through the basket (or doesn’t) after time has expired, people have gotten a little sloppy. Shots that are made with less than a few seconds left are often referred to as buzzer beaters, even if you and I know that they technically should not be. In this Youtube video of great NBA buzzer beaters, about half of them should technically not qualify because there is still a fraction of a second left on the clock after they go in:

As you can see from the video, buzzer beaters are exciting! This is the third and last exception to their pure definition. A buzzer beater that happens when a team is down by forty points is not really considered a buzzer beater. To really be though of as a buzzer beater, a shot should not only fall after the clock hits zero, but it should also win the game for the team that shot it.

The only other sports parallel I can think of to the buzzer beater is from boxing where a fighter who has been knocked to the ground can be “saved by the bell.” In boxing, a downed fighter has ten seconds to rise back to his feet and prepare to continue boxing. If he or she can’t do that, they lose the fight. The only exception to this is a boxer who gets knocked down with less than ten seconds left in a round. In this case, depending on the rules of the fight, he or she might be given a free pass from that time requirement. It’s mostly an anachronism today — boxing rules have evolved enough to recognize that a fighter who cannot recover in ten seconds should not keep fighting, even if it is at the end of the round. Still, it’s interesting that both phrases for how sports action continues after the clock hits zero have become recognizable phrases in our language. People are fascinated by what will happen after their own time has run out. In the constructed world of sports, we get to decide how that works. In boxing and basketball, there is momentarily, life after death.

Thanks for asking,
Ezra Fischer

What happened on Monday, February 9, 2015?

  1. The real number one: Women’s college basketball experienced a rare meeting of the top ranked team in the country and the number two ranked team last night as South Carolina met the University of Connecticut on the basketball court. UConn is the traditional power of women’s college basketball and they flexed their muscles, beating South Carolina easily, 87-62.
    Line: UConn always seems like a safe bet, no matter who they are playing.
  2. Mike Smith, generic sounding hero: I’ve always thought that Mike Smith, the goalie for the Arizona Coyotes would get more recognition if his name was something slightly less generic. Last night, he survived a crazy sequence at the end of regulation to help his team beat the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2 in a shootout win.
    Line: Did you SEE that Mike Smith save?
  3. Sport of attrition: People often complain that the National Basketball Association season is too long; that it should be cut from 82 games to 72 or 64 or something. One argument against that is that playing 82 games poses a specific challenge to basketball teams that might not exist in a shorter season — can they stay healthy? The game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks was a case in point last night. The teams came into the game missing key players — Blake Griffin on the Clippers and Rajon Rondo on the Mavericks, and then the Mavericks lost two more, Monta Ellis and Tyson Chandler in the first five minutes of the game. The Clippers won, 115-98.
    Line: Part of the game is finding a way to stay healthy.

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:

  • British Premier League Soccer – Tottenham at Liverpool, 3 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NHL Hockey – Dallas Stars at Boston Bruins, 7 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NBA Basketball – Houston Rockets at Phoenix Suns at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.
  • And more!

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.