basketball Archives - Page 10 of 14

Retired NBA center Yao Ming saves elephants

There’s a cliche in basketball that you “can’t teach height.” What people mean by that is no matter how much practice and coaching and hard work a basketball player puts into his or her craft, if they’re not tall, there’s only so good they can get. The flip side of this, of course, is that if you are very, very tall, there’s a place for you in basketball as long as you are coordinated enough to run. As a consequence, NBA centers, the tallest of the tall, are often very interesting people. As a group they tend to be less single-mindedly obsessed with basketball. They may not have needed to be that obsessed to have successful NBA careers. If you follow sports, you get the sense that some of them might not even like basketball very much.

Yao Ming towered over his NBA counterparts but his biggest contribution may be off the court

Retired NBA center Yao Ming is very, very tall. He’s seven and a half feet tall or, as they would best understand it in his native China, 2.29 meters. He’s absolutely not of the type that did not like basketball, on the contrary, I think he loved it, but he is a well-rounded person. I’ll always remember his comment in response to media concerns that he would be devastated if forced to retire because of foot injuries:

“I haven’t died,” he said. “Right now I’m drinking a beer and eating fried chicken. What were you expecting, a funeral?”

Recently Yao Ming’s name popped up in the news for his role in an effort to save Africa’s “dwindling elephant population.” Simon Denyer brings us this story in an article in the Washington Post and it is well worth a read. I was impressed to find out that Yao Ming’s effort to save elephants from poaching by reducing Chinese demand for illegal ivory has a precedent for success. He’s done the same for sharks by “pressing the Chinese people to give up shark fin soup.” In fact, after his campaign against shark fin soup, “prices and sales of shark fins in China [went] down by 50 to 70 percent.”

I wish Yao Ming success in his new drive against ivory sales and elephant poaching. Saving animals in Africa from extinction is a worthy cause for everyone who loves the earth but especially for retired NBA centers. Why? Because as Yao Ming jokes, he loves Africa because in Africa, many animals are even bigger than him!

Cue Cards 9-8-2014

Cue 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.

Yesterday — Sunday, September 7

The National Football League Makes its triumphant return — With all the off-season mess: players being suspended, players being suspended, owners being suspended, etc. it was easy to wonder why professional football has such a pull on us all. Yesterday’s football games reminded us why — because they are exciting! Full tiny synopses in our NFL One Liners column.
Line: That’s why the NFL is the most popular sport — two overtime games, comebacks left and right, fantasy football excitement!
Serena reigns supreme over nearly everyone — Serena Williams never lost more than three games in a set (you need to win 6 to win the set) during the entire U.S. Open tournament. Fittingly, she beat her opponent in the final, Caroline Wozniaki, 6-3, 6-3. Serena Williams is great.
Line: It’s amazing that Serena Williams is still so dominant at an age (32) when most other tennis players are on their way to retirement.
The Basketball World Cup gets serious — The round of 16 in the FIBA Basketball World Cup is complete after four games yesterday. There were no enormous surprises — the U.S. and Spain still seem fated to meet in the finals. The most hotly contested game was between neighbors and rivals Brazil and Argentina. Possibly seeking a little cosmic revenge for the soccer World Cup, the Brazilian team won 85 to 65. The next round of the tournament begins on Tuesday.
Line: Brazil had too much size inside, with Anderson Verejao, Tiago Splitter, and Nene, for Argentina to handle.

The FIBA Basketball World Cup heats up today

Expect a great atmosphere when Spain plays France

So, a sports blogger walks into a bar… No, it’s not really the start of a joke. Or at least if it is, I don’t know the punchline. But I did sit in a bar and nurse a beer for about an hour yesterday in an attempt to find an air-conditioned spot while I killed time before my fantasy draft. I was alone, so I watched some U.S. Open tennis on the television and listened to the three guys next to me in the bar talk. Like lots of people on barstools, they talked mostly about sports. They were being prompted by a sports highlights show on another television and a video of the New Zealand national basketball team doing their traditional pre-game Haka got them talking about the FIBA Basketball World Cup. Here’s the dance, which is worth watching:

Now, I love basketball and I love dance, so I think this is awesome. The guys on the bar stools… not so much. I was surprised at how little interest they had in the basketball tournament. Who could possibly win but the United States, they complained? Even with many of the best U.S. players not playing. Why is there even basketball on at this time of the year? Despite this sampling of opinion from the man on the street^[1] I’m going to fight upstream here and point out a couple exciting things that are happening at the Basketball World Cup today.

As explained in our post on how the Basketball World Cup works, the first round is a group stage where the best four of the six teams in each of the three groups advance to the next round. As of today, every team has played three of the five first round games. This means, with two games remaining, we have a much better idea of which teams are good and which games are likely to be exciting and important.

There’s a bunch of them on the schedule today:

7:30 a.m. ET — Philippines vs. Puerto Rico — Why would a game between two winless teams be exciting? It’s the nature of international competition. These teams want to take a win back to their home countries and this is their best chance to do it!

11:30 a.m. ET — Senegal vs. Argentina — Surprising Senegal tries to continue its run. One more win would ensure them a spot in the next round. Plus, how can you not root for a team whose coach says, “Other teams come here to win the tournament. We are here to win.”

4:00 p.m. ET — France vs. Spain — It’s no surprise that the organizers of the tournament decided to put this game in Grenada, far to the south of Spain. In a clash between bordering countries, why would the host country give the French fans an easy trip to the game? National rivalries are a great feature of international tournaments and I expect the atmosphere for this game to be great. Undefeated Spain is the more talented team but France has been surprisingly good, even without its best player, Tony Parker.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Or at least the men on the barstools↵

Cue Cards 9-2-14

Cue 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.

Over the Weekend — August 29 to September 1

Harbingers of NFL Football — The professional football season starts this Thursday with one game and then this Sunday with a dozen others. Since the NFL is by far the most popular professional sports league, the upcoming season will likely dominate most water cooler type situations this week. Depending on where you live, your friends, family, and colleagues will be obsessing over the details of a different team but one national story that may spark conversation was the cutting of Michael Sam. Sam, the first openly gay football player to be drafted into the NFL was cut by the team that drafted him this weekend. The questions being asked are, “How much, if any, did being gay play into his being cut? And will he get a chance to play for real this season?”
College football went mostly as planned — As we covered last week, the first weekend of college football is full of easy games for the top twenty five teams in the country. As expected, only three of the top twenty five teams lost their first game, and those were the three (well, three of the six) teams that were brave enough to play another top twenty five team.
The U.S. Open rounds into shape — The major tennis tournament enters its second full week and has narrowed its field to eight women and twelve men. As has often been the case with tennis in the last few years, the male side of the bracket has been more predictable and all three of the favorites, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, and Roger Federer, are still alive. The women’s side, as has also been the pattern, is more fractured. Of the top seeds, only Serena Williams is still playing. Williams and Federer both have 17 major tournament victories during their wonderful careers. It would be great to see them both play for number 18.
The Basketball World Cup — The FIBA basketball world cup in Spain is underway and after two or three games in each group… nothing surprising has happened. Spain and the United States are still undefeated and look destined to play in the finals against each other. The United States did struggle against Turkey — they even trailed at half-time — but outscored Turkey 63 to 37 in the second half to win by a comfortable margin.

How Does the Basketball World Cup Work?

The FIBA Basketball World Cup begins on Saturday, August 30. As many of us found out or remembered earlier this summer in the Men’s Soccer World Cup, international sports are a great mixture of top level talent, patriotic fervor, and cultural sharing. Unlike soccer, where the World Cup dwarfs the Olympics, the World Cup of Basketball is a second tier tournament. Going up against the start of college and professional football, it’s unlikely to draw the full attention of all but the most die-hard basketball fans. Despite that or perhaps because of that, I’m oddly looking forward to it. Here’s some information about how the tournament works and who might win.

Tournament Structure

The tournament is structured very similarly to the soccer World Cup. It starts with a group stage. The twenty four teams in the tournament are separated into four groups of six teams each. There is a round robin whereby each team plays the other five teams in their group. The top four teams based on record and then a (you guessed it) somewhat Byzantine set of tie-breakers. Also oddly, two points are given for a win and one for a loss. Only a team that forfeits a game can walk away with no points. Once the group stage is done, there is a single elimination knockout round starting with the 16 qualifying teams. Teams from groups A & B won’t play teams from groups C & D until the finals or the third place game. The top two ranked teams coming into the tournament, the United States and host country Spain, we’re placed in opposite sides of the tournament so that they can meet in the finals if all goes as expected.

Differences in NBA vs. FIBA Rules

If you are at all familiar with watching NBA basketball, you’re likely to notice some major differences in the rules. Games are shorter – forty minutes divided into four ten minute quarters. The three-point line is fourteen percent closer to the basket which has a major tactical impact on how the game is played. Players foul out of the game after five fouls instead of six. Once the ball bounces off the rim of the basket and doesn’t go in, anyone can tip it (in or out) freely as opposed to in the NBA where players have to wait for the ball to clear the airspace above the basket before legally touching it.

The U.S. is going to win, right?

Yeah, probably. The two favorites in the tournament are the United States and Spain. A recent Vegas sports book has the United States as 4-7 favorites (you have to bet seven dollars to make a profit of only four if the U.S. wins) and Spain as the second most likely winner at 3-2 (if you bet two dollars and Spain wins, you stand to make a profit of three dollars. There are a handful of other teams in a clump as the next most likely winners: France, Brazil, Argentina, and Lithuania. All four of these teams are 30-1 (win thirty for each dollar you bet) from which you can tell that Vegas doesn’t think it’s very likely for them to win.

So why is this worth watching?

Mostly because it’s fun. The United States’ first game is against Finland and maybe it’s just me but I think watching a bunch of hockey-player-name-having Finns like Mikko Koivisto and Hanno Möttölä try to hold down the fort against the United States will be fun, at least for the first five or ten minutes. Among the other countries, there are a few teams that I think will be really fun to watch. Brazil is full of skilled big guys, Serbia and Croatia are both staffed by clever, quick, sharp-shooting players, and Greece could sneak up on people. Australia has a player named Matthew Dellavedova. I don’t know much about him but just hoping that he meets, falls in love with, marries, and has children with WNBA star Elena Delle Donne will keep me happy.

CBS Sports has a full preview of all twenty-four of the teams here.

I’m convinced. How do I watch?

All the games will be televised or streamed live. ESPN, ESPN2, and NBA TV are the main television carriers. All the U.S. games will be on ESPN or ESPN2 during the group stage with NBA TV televising other select games. If you’re interested in a game that’s not carried on one of these channels, (I have my eye on Spain vs. France at 4 pm ET on Sept. 3,) take a look at the full schedule. You can stream every game live on ESPN3.

When American sports go abroad

Gilas Blatche — From Brooklyn to the Philippines — Andray Blatche

In the spirit of one last Summer vacation before the season is over, I’m excited to bring you two wonderful stories about American sports going abroad. One story explores the recent and rapid adoption of American Football in Poland while the other profiles the National Basketball Team of the Philippines and their newest countryman, Andray Blatche, who was born in New York and has played his whole life in the United States.

“What happened in the championship of the Polish American Football League” sounds like the first line of a pre-political correctness ethnic joke but actually it’s a legitimate question for the tens of thousands of people who follow American Football in Poland. Rick Lyman of the New York Times brings us a gripping story about how Poland has embraced American football. It’s a wonderful window into how another culture views the game of football, free from some of the cultural implications and the pressure of billions of dollars that weigh down the conversation in the United States. Some of my favorite parts were the description of how family oriented the live experience of the games are:

At the game against the Goats, besides a bouncy castle, there was an inflatable sliding board, a giant dinosaur, a Starbucks tent, a bubble tea concession, a very popular burger van, a kielbasa grill, a small beer garden beyond the end zone and a “Zibi & Steczki” (steak and potatoes) stand run by the Harley guys.

“We also encourage picnicking,” Mr. Steszewski said. “Of course, we are not up to the standards of American tailgating.”

and a brief look into the one all-women’s team in the league, the aptly named Warsaw Sirens:

“Our colors are pink and black,” said Kamila Glowacz, 29, the team’s president. “You know, because we’re girls.”

The team got started when some of the women visited America and happened to see a game. “Many men told us we should go to the kitchen, not to the field,” she said. “But women, you know, we do what we want to do.”

It’s a wonderful article and is well worth reading to the final, hysterical line. I’ve definitely taken note of Lyman as a writer to follow and I’d love to watch some Polish football if it were ever on TV.

The second story about what happens when American sports go abroad is about the successful recruitment of American Andray Blatche by the Filipino National Basketball team and the process of introducing him to the team. Written by Rafe Bartholomew for Grantland.com, this article is a fun look into a wacky basketball player in a completely curious situation.

International basketball allows for one naturalized citizen to play for each country’s national team. This often means that American college players who either couldn’t make an NBA team or who have tried and failed in the NBA get recruited to play for another country. Recruitment in sports isn’t unusual, it happens at every level, but it is notable when signing up means not just signing a contract but becoming a citizen of a foreign country. In this case, Andray Blatche had to be the subject of a law that passed through the Philippines congress and signed by their president before he could begin playing with the Filipino team.

Once Bartholomew ably tells the tale of how Blatche was courted and signed, he moves on to the important question of how a talented but unreliable 6’11” NBA American center will fit into a team of undersized relatively lesser skilled Filipinos. The answer seems to be, “Pretty well.” The Filipino coach, team, and fans are refreshingly (for our stats obsessed sports landscape) focused on playing with heart and passion. For whatever else you can say about Blatche, he’s got both of those in droves. I loved the parts of the piece when Bartholomew focused on Blatche’s growing relationship with his Filipino teammates and staff. Here’s one choice bit:

Blatche even seemed to develop a genuine closeness with Gilas ball boy Bong Tulabot — and not just because Bong spent the 15 minutes before every practice massaging weapons-grade menthol liniment into Blatche’s calf muscles. “Where’s my guy?” were often the first words out of Blatche’s mouth when he’d enter the gym, and he’d jockey with Alapag for Bong’s attention. The unlikely bond between Blatche, the 28-year-old, 6-foot-11 NBA center, and Bong, the 48-year-old, 5-foot-6 Filipino team handyman who used to sell rice porridge in the street, was consummated when a morning practice ended with a visiting SBP official placing $200 at half court and inviting everyone in the gym to shoot for it. Blatche launched his half-court attempt, and when the ball rattled through the rim Bong leaped in celebration.

“DAT’S MY MAN! DAT’S MY MAN!” Bong shouted in a peculiar falsetto as he ran in circles around the gym. Blatche melted to the floor in laughter, then got up to meet Bong for a running, jumping chest bump, although their height disparity made the maneuver look more like Bong delivering a flying head butt to Blatche’s waist. Nevertheless, the moment was enough to make “DAT’S MY MAN!” the team catchphrase for the rest of its time in Miami.

So far, so good in Blatche’s time with the Filipino national team. The true test comes over the next week when the Philippines will try to upset the world and qualify for the knock out round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup. We’ll be running an article on how that tournament works later today, so keep your eyes to the grindstone.

Basketball and Baseball Uniform Posters

One of my favorite professional experiences came several years back when I was working as a business analyst for Return Path. My boss back then, Jack Sinclair, found an Edward Tufte one-day course and decided to send me to it. Tufte is one of the foremost practicers, proponents, and gurus of data visualization, the art of showing information through graphics. One of Tufte’s favorite techniques is the use of small multiples. Small multiples are graphics that repeat the same basic frame over and over again in a single view to emphasize the differences. Think the frames of a flip-book but instead of flipping from one to another to deliver a message, you display them all at once.

A good example of this is Tufte’s reworking of an instructional display of air-craft marshaling signals, as reproduced by businessweek.com.

One of my favorite creative poster companies, Pop Chart Lab, has a couple of sports posters that use this principle of small multiples. They’re running a sale through August 29 on these and other charts. Use the code, “solongsummer” to get 15% off. My favorite is the visual compendium of baseball uniforms. This poster shows 121 tiny baseball uniforms from teams from 1869 through 2014. Each tiny uniform is a lens to an era. Baseball, with it’s rich cultural of historical respect and nostalgia lends itself perfectly to this treatment.

Also good is a similar visual compendium of basketball uniforms. The concept is the same and it still works. Basketball has a shorter history and doesn’t really share the timeless nostalgia of baseball. What it does have though is a strong fashion and pop-culture presence. Hidden among the professional jerseys of this poster are jerseys from movies like White Men Can’t Jump and He Got Game as well as jerseys designed for record companies like Bad Boy and No Limit Records.

Both posters are available for $35 before the 15% discount and are printed in my home borough of Queens. Get ’em while they’re hot!

What the Reaction to Paul George's Leg Injury Means

During a televised intra-squad scrimmage of the U.S. Men’s National Basketball team in their preparation for the upcoming World Cup of Basketball, Paul George, a star basketball player, broke his leg. The word used most frequently to describe the injury seems to be “horrific.” It was an open fracture of the tibia and fibula. Almost as soon as George had been carted off the court and the rest of the scrimmage canceled, the predominant story among the media became variations on the question, “What will Paul George’s leg injury mean for the future participation of NBA players in international competitions?” The thought running through my mind has been, “What does the reaction to Paul George’s leg injury mean? Why is this the media’s reaction? What can we learn from it?

NBA: Indiana Pacers at Charlotte Bobcats — Is the story of Paul George’s injury about his career or the Indiana Pacers?

The implication of the Paul George story that’s been percolating is this: now that a star player has been injured in a national team activity, NBA players should stop taking part in international competition. Who does this make sense for? There’s three main actors in this power play. There’s the NBA owners who employ the players. There’s the players. And then there’s the fans. Not to get all political science on you here, but they nicely represent Capital, Labor, and Consumer. Let’s go through this one at a time:

The Fans

Fans of the Indiana Pacers, the team that Paul George plays for in the NBA, are upset today. They just watched the best player on a team, someone who they’ve grown fond of after watching him play since he was twenty years old, snap his leg on national television. George will probably be okay, the surgery is said to have been successful but it’s not clear how okay the Pacers will be. They’ve been the second best team for two years running in the Eastern Conference, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll even be that good when George comes back in a year. Their second best player, David West, is in the final third of his career and may not be as good then. They lost their third best player, Lance Stephenson, in free agency, and their fourth best player, Roy Hibbert, is a riddle wrapped up in a seven foot enigma.

All that said, it’s hard to argue that the fans as a whole lose from international play. Basketball fans love basketball and international basketball is wonderful to follow and to watch. Furthermore, if you’re a fan of one of the other fourteen teams in the Eastern Conference… well, you’re not crowing about it but your team’s path to the finals just got a little easier. As a consumer of basketball, international play is a net win for you, a fact even the most depressed Indiana Pacers fan would admit if you stuck her with truth serum.

The Players

Paul George certainly lost out in this particular case. His leg is broken and he won’t be able to play basketball for another year. The players as a group, however, only gain by playing internationally — with a few exceptions. The first thing to understand about this is that contracts in the NBA, unlike those in the NFL, are guaranteed. George’s contract, which begins this year, runs for five years and $91.5 million dollars. His injury does nothing to affect that. Of the other players playing in that scrimmage, only one of them is slated to become a free agent in the next twelve months. Basketball players, even during the offseason, play basketball. It’s just what they do. They may take some vacation but most of the time during the offseason, they’re in gyms, playing high intensity basketball against the best players in the world. This injury could have happened in any practice at any time and the consequences physically and financially would have been the same. Playing in international competitions doesn’t increase the risk of injury for most players and it has great potential value in the form of professional development and exposure for sponsorship or endorsement deals.

The one major exception to this are players who, for whatever reason, feel or are compelled to play in these competitions, even if they are injured. Yao Ming, the Chinese great, forced his 7’6″ body up and down the court every summer for China and it almost definitely shortened his career and lowered his earnings in the long run. The solution to this isn’t to get pros out of these competitions, it’s for countries not to force their players to play.

One last point about the players. The likely alternative to having professionals play in these competitions would be to have amateurs, mostly college kids to play. The cost-benefit for them is significantly worse than for the professionals. College athletes don’t have guaranteed contracts. In fact, they’re not “paid” at all. If a college athlete broke his leg like George did, he might never get drafted, never make a fortune, never have a dream career. Let’s not have the grownups vacate something not-so-risky so that kids can take it up even though it’s more risky for them.

The NBA Owners

NBA owners don’t make any money directly from international competitions. It’s probably worth writing that again. NBA owner don’t make any money directly from international competitions. The downside of their players playing is exactly what happened on Friday. The Pacers owner is likely to make tens of million dollars fewer this year without Paul George than he would have with him playing. The upside? It’s hard to measure. Professionals playing in international competition definitely attracts new fans to basketball who then become fans of the NBA. Players who come through uninjured often benefit from the experience and become more valuable employees.

That’s why the story of this injury quickly became “Will this mean that NBA players no longer are going to play in international competition?” It’s because team owners, who employ the players, don’t want their players to play in international competition. At least they don’t want the players to play (to be allowed to play if we tell the truth about it,) without the owners getting paid.

As fans, I don’t think we should take the owners side on this one. I love watching international sports with the best players in the world competing against each other and it’s really not a bad deal for the players, not even for Paul George, truth be told. So resist the urge to take up the owners side on this issue!

Celebrating Women in the NBA

Two stories popped up recently about women in the NBA that are worth knowing about. The women in the spotlight are Becky Hammon and Violet Palmer. Both were successful point guards during their playing days and both have become pioneers for women in men’s professional basketball.

Violet Palmer

_MG_2587 — Violet Palmer, trailblazing NBA ref

The first story was mercifully underplayed because it’s really no big deal. Violet Palmer, who became the first female NBA ref in 1997, married her long-time partner, Tanya Stine. Palmer said in an interview that although she came out as gay to her fellow refs in 2007, this is her “big formal coming out.” Palmer has been a trailblazer for women in an arena inexplicably dominated by men. ESPNW covered this exhaustively in 2011 and unfortunately not much has changed since Jane McManus wrote this:

No women call NFL, Major League Baseball or NHL games. The NBA has one female official, Violet Palmer. The elite levels of professional and Olympic soccer are opening their doors to women, with the majority of the opportunities coming in the women’s game.

Being a ref is a tough job for anyone. A common cliché about refs, which I think is pretty true, is that the best refs are the least noticed ones. This is because fans usually only remark on a ref when they feel he or she has made a bad call. Violet Palmer has done it for seventeen years and has been thoroughly unremarkable for all the best reasons. Women, gay people, and all lovers of equality should be proud of her.

Becky Hammon

Becky Hammon has had an interesting career. Despite having been a star at her college, Colorado State University, she was not drafted by any WNBA team. Instead, she was signed as a free-agent by the New York Liberty where she became a solid player. That was 1999. Since then, she’s played professional basketball in one league or another for the past 15 years. She became mildly notorious in 2008 when, frustrated by not being invited to join the U.S. Olympic program, she became a naturalized Russian citizen and joined their team. This is slightly less crazy than it might seem at first. Like in some other women’s sports, while the most competitive league in the world may be in the United States, the salaries are significantly higher elsewhere. Many women who play in the United States also play professionally elsewhere for part of the year. Russia was a common destination for many top female players during the late 2000s. If you’re curious about the lifestyle, I dug up a great article from a few years back by Jim Caple that profiles a few top American players in Russia. For the past seven years she’s played point guard for the San Antonio Silver Stars.

Yesterday news broke that she was retiring from the WNBA to become Assistant Coach for the San Antonio Spurs, the men’s professional basketball team in San Antonio and reigning NBA Champions. Any major hire that the Spurs make would make news but this made big news because Hammon will be the first female Assistant Coach in NBA history. Hammon is already familiar with the Spurs and they are familiar with her. While rehabbing a major knee injury last year, she spent a lot of time at Spurs practices with the blessing and mentorship of long-time Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. According to Andrew Keh in this New York Times article, Hammon called that time an “internship.” She must have impressed because Popovich not only hired her but covered her with praise (effusive praise for the normally taciturn Popovich,) saying that he is “confident her basketball I.Q., work ethic and interpersonal skills will be a great benefit to the Spurs.”

The best part of this is that just because the Spurs did this, the rest of the league is waking up this morning not only respecting Hammon’s hiring but frankly scared of it. The Spurs have done such a wonderful job over the past twenty years and have developed such a reputation for finding talent where other teams miss it that I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the WNBA ranks were thoroughly scoured for other coaching talent in the next year. That’s a good thing.

What is a Conference in Sports?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a conference in sports? What makes a conference a conference? And why is it called a conference?

Thanks,
Erik

— — —

Dear Erik,

Thanks for your question. A conference is a collection of teams that play more against each other than they do against the other teams in their sport. As you’ll see, conferences have various histories and meanings in different sports. In some sports conferences are defined geographically. In some they are the remnants of history. In some sports the conferences are actually pseudo competitive bodies themselves and in other sports they are cooperating divisions within a single organization. Conferences vary in importance and independence from sport to sport. Before we get into the differences, let’s start with some general truths about conferences that apply across (almost) all sports.

Teams within a conference play more games against each other than against the other teams in their sport. It varies by league and by sport. In the NHL, for example, teams play at least three times per season against every other team in their conference but only twice against teams from the other conference. In Major League Baseball teams only play 20 of 162 games against teams from the other conference.

Conferences crown conference champions in all sports. In many leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB, playoff brackets are organized by conference. Teams in the AFC (one of the NFL conferences) only play teams from the AFC in the playoffs until the Super Bowl. So, the conference champion is basically the winner of the semi-final game. In other sports, mostly college sports, the conferences only really have meaning during the regular season, so conferences have different ways of deciding a champion. Depending on the sport and conference, there may be a conference tournament at the end of the regular season or a single championship game between the two teams with the best records in the conference. In some conferences, like Ivy League basketball, the champion is just the team with the best record in games against other teams in the Ivy League.

What Sports Have Geographically Defined Conferences?

A geographic division of teams is perhaps the most sensible way of defining a conference. Since teams within a conference play more games against each other than against teams outside of their conference, organizing geographically saves money, time, and wear and tear on the players by reducing the overall travel time during a season. The NBA and NHL are organized in this way. Both leagues have an Eastern and a Western Conference and both stay reasonably true to geographic accuracy. The NBA has a couple borderline assignments with Memphis and New Orleans in the West and Chicago and Milwaukee in the East. The NHL recently realigned its conferences, in part to fix some long-standing issues with geography like Detroit being in the West. Geographic conferences seem logical because they simplify operations for the teams within them. Many college conferences began geographically but as we’ll see later, that’s no longer their defining characteristic or driving force.

What Sports Have Historically Defined Conferences?

It’s easy to think about the sporting landscape as a set of neat monopolies. The NFL rules football, the NBA, basketball, the MLB, baseball, and the NHL, hockey. It wasn’t always that simple. Most of these professional leagues are the product of intense competition between leagues and only became supreme after either beating or joining their rival. The NFL was formed by the merger between two competitive leagues, the traditional NFC and the upstart AFC. The NBA beat out its biggest rival, the ABA, in 1976 but took many ideas from it, like the three-point line but alas not the famous ABA multi-colored ball. Believe it or not, Major League Baseball was not a single entity until 2000! Before then its two conferences (still called “leagues” because of their history as separate entities but pretty much, they are conferences,) the National League and the American League were independent entities.

Two leagues, Major League Baseball and the National Football League continue to have conferences defined by their competitive history. In baseball, the American League and National League each have teams across the entire country, often even in the same city like the New York Yankees (AL) and Mets (NL), Chicago with its White Sox (AL) and Cubs (NL) and Los Angeles/Anaheim with the Angels (AL) and Dodgers (NL). The NFL has similarly kept its historic leagues, the AFC or American Football Conference and NFC or National Football Conference. Each NFL Conference is broken up into three geographic divisions, East, Central, and West, but they all play more against the teams in their conference, even far away, than the teams close by but in the other conference. In the NFL the two conferences play under exactly the same rules but in baseball there are still some major historic differences in how the game is played, most significantly that pitchers have to also bat in the National League but are allowed to be replaced by a designated hitter in the American League.

What Sports Have Conferences that are Competitive?

So far we’ve looked at geographic and historically defined conferences. It’s clear that geographic conferences don’t compete against each other — they are part of the same entity. You can imagine that because of their history, the conferences in the NFL and MLB may be a little competitive with each other, like brothers or sisters. There are still some conferences though where competition against other conferences is their key driving force. These conferences are largely found in college sports.

Most college conferences have geographic names — the Big East, the South-Eastern Conference (SEC), the Pacific Athletic Conference (PAC 12), the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Sun Belt, and the Mountain West. When they formed, they formed for all the reasons we discussed above in the geographic section but also to take advantage of financial arrangements that could only be made together, most importantly television contracts. As the money has gotten bigger, especially in college football, the competition between conferences for the best teams and the most lucrative contracts has become incredibly intense. In recent years, you’ve seen conferences poach teams from one another in a race to provide television viewers with the most competitive leagues to follow and therefore generate gobs of profit. This scattered the geographic nature of these conferences so that a map showing which teams are in which conferences now looks like a patchwork quilt.

Like it did with the ABA and NBA, the NFC and AFC, and the NL and AL, my guess is that this competition between conferences in college sports will resolve itself into some more stable league form. No one knows when this will happen but my guess is that it will be in the next ten or fifteen years. I guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

Thanks for asking about conferences,
Ezra Fischer