Tag: nfl

Are Predictable Sports More Popular?

Dear Sports Fan,

Are more predictable sports more popular than unpredictable sports?

Thanks,
Tyrone

Dear Tyrone,

Great question! I’m not sure what the answer is, or if there even is a clear correlation between popularity and predictability, but it’s something I’ve often thought about it. Let’s explore this together!

The four major sports in the United States are Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball. In two of those sports, Football and Basketball, college competition is close in popularity to the professional leagues, so we will include those in our discussion. The first thing to do is establish the order in which these sports are popular. I have my own favorites, but television ratings should provide a pretty good guide to the true popularity of the sports. There’s a good post on this at www.spottedratings.com which looks at the relative ratings of the championships of the six sports leagues.  In order, they are:

Popularity (Television Ratings)
1. NFL Football
2. NBA Basketball
3. College Basketball
4. College Football
5. Major League Baseball
6. National Hockey League[1]

Now we come to the more interesting piece of this which is to attempt to rank these in order of predictability. There are two main factors that play into this — the format of the playoffs and the elements of the sport itself. The key difference in format is between single elimination[2] and a playoff series.[3] As you might imagine, the playoff series creates much more predictable results because it allows a better team to have an off night and still end up the champion.

Single Elimination
NFL Football
College Basketball
College Football

Playoff Series
NBA Basketball
Major League Baseball
National Hockey League

It’s a bit harder to figure out how the elements of each sport affect their predictability. I’m sure there are thousands of factors that effect this, but let’s just chose one to think about — the average score. High scoring games would seem to be more predictable by the same logic that playoff series are — they make it less likely that a single bad moment, a single mistake, or a single moment of unusual brilliance will change the eventual result.

Scoring (from high to low)
NBA Basketball
College Basketball[4]
College Football
NFL Football
Major League Baseball
NHL Hockey

If we combine these two factors[5] we end up with the sports in this order.

Predictability (format, scoring)
NBA Basketball (+3,+3) 6
Major League Baseball (+3,-2) 1
National Hockey League (+3, -3) 0
College Basketball (-3,+2) -1
College Football (-3, +1) -2
NFL Football (-3, -1) -4

This model, because of its simplicity, doesn’t quite match up with my instincts about the sports. For instance, my gut tells me that College Football is actually significantly more predictable than College Basketball, there’s a reason the College Basketball tournament is called “March Madness,” but I think it’s mostly correct. For evidence of the overall directional correctness, consider that there have been twelve different NFL champions in the last twenty years but only eight in the last twenty years of the NBA. The NFL engenders clichés like “any given Sunday” to express its unpredictable nature, whereas the NBA is known for its dynastic teams, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers[6] and Michael Jordan who won six championships with the Chicago Bulls during eight years in the 1990s.

I’m still not sure if there is any clear connection between predictability and popularity, but it at least seems obvious that unpredictability is not harmful to a sport’s popularity. So when you hear silly stories about how horrible it is that College Football doesn’t have a playoff like College Basketball does, and people like Barack Obama get involved, just make sure they don’t use “getting the best team to be the champion” as a rationale. Not only is a single elimination playoff notoriously unpredictable, but many of the most popular sports have the least predictable results!

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. It’s figuratively physically painful for me to see hockey at the bottom of this list since it has clearly the best playoffs of any sport. It is worth mentioning that some of its finals games are televised on a mildly obscure cable channel with a relatively smaller distribution.↵
  2. if your team loses a single game, it’s out↵
  3. like you played rock-paper-scissors as a kid, this is best x out of y where x = y/2 + 1↵
  4. The college game is eight minutes shorter and has a longer shot clock which allows a team to hold the ball longer before being forced to take a shot.↵
  5. Let’s do give a sport +3/-3 for format and +3 to -3 for scoring to get a ranking from 1-6 overall↵
  6. These two teams alone have won 33 of 65 NBA championships.↵

What Happened on the Last Giants Touchdown?

Dear Sports Fan,

What the hell happened on the play where Ahmad Bradshaw scored?

Thanks,
Mary

Dear Mary,

Welcome to a situation where real life and video games collide. Anyone who’s played Madden football has done what the Patriots did in that situation and knew immediately it was the right call. To recap:

Giants are down 17-15 with only a few minutes on the clock. Either a touchdown OR a field goal wins the game for them. This is important to note.

After Eli Manning completed his absurd pass to Mario Manningham, and executed a few more mundane plays, it became clear that the Giants were going to score. They were in field goal range, and rapidly approaching the range where basically you or I could successfully kick a field goal.

At a certain point the Patriots had to make a decision: when do we accept the reality that they’re going to score, and how do we get the ball back as quickly as possible and with as many timeouts as possible (this is important to note), so that we can try to counter? Keep in mind the Patriots only had two timeouts left because they had used one to challenge whether or not Mario Manningham caught Eli Manning’s absurd pass which, absurdly enough, he did. The clock also stops at the two minute warning,[1] giving the Patriots three opportunities to stop the clock.

If you’re the Giants, the plan is simple: run as many safe plays as you can for as long as you can to draw the clock down and force the Patriots to use all of their timeouts. Then, when you’ve eaten up as much time as you can – they could have taken the clock down to around 20 seconds in this case – you line up and kick the field goal, taking the lead and giving the Patriots very little time to get the ball back and score.

Here’s where Madden football comes in: in video game world, the ONLY sensible thing to do in this situation is to let the other team score a touchdown immediately. If the choice is trailing by five or six with around a minute to go and a time out, or trailing by three with 20 seconds to go and no timeouts, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. So in Madden world, you call the most permissive (promiscuous?) defense you have and, as soon as the play starts, take control of as many players as possible and dive to the ground to avoid making a tackle.

In the NFL, this rarely happens – primarily because coaches and players always like to think there’s a chance of stopping someone or forcing a turnover, and letting the opponent score reeks of surrender, which is something football players are conditioned to never do; and second, because the other team is presumably smarter than the artificial intelligence in the Madden game and will refuse to cooperate.

How? It’s pretty simple: you fall down before you get in the end zone. Falling down – we do it all the time. It’s the easiest thing to do in the world, unless you’re Ahmad Bradshaw and the only thought in your mind is scoring the winning touchdown in a Super Bowl, and the defense miraculously melts away in front of you and you have a clear path to the end zone and it’s not until you’re at the one-foot line that you realize – either because you hear someone yelling or you hear your coach’s voice in your head – that you’re dancing on the very thin line between being a Super Bowl Hero or being The Greatest Super Bowl Goat of All Time,[2] but it’s too late and your momentum slowly topples you into the unknown. (footnote 3: In this case, the obscene run on sentence is an attempt to capture the running back’s stream of consciousness. It’s neither laziness nor an indictment of the writer’s high school English teachers)

So as it does in Madden football, the strategy worked for the Pats – or worked as well as it could have under the circumstances. That they weren’t able to complete an absurd Hail Mary pass in the end zone to win the game in the end isn’t an indictment of their strategy – the mere fact that they were a foot away from a Super Bowl winning catch validates what every video football game player has known for years.

Thanks for the question,
Dean Russell Bell

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. The 2 minute warning is an institution that no one really challenges. It’s unquestioningly accepted as part of the game, like tight pants – except the tight pants actually serve a purpose. There are 53 players and dozens of coaches on the sideline and there are scoreboards all over the stadium – do they really need to be warned that there are only 2 minutes left?↵
  2. The GOAT goat?↵

What Channel is the Super Bowl on? Who are the Patriots?

Dear Sports Fan,

Who are the Patriots? Is the Super Bowl today? Tell me what channel to watch — I guess I really should join the rest of the human race if only for a little bit.

Thanks,
Jim

 

Dear Jim,

Ha! Yes, today is the super bowl!

It’s on NBC (probably channel 4) at 6:30. The New England Patriots play the New York Giants.
This is a rematch of a Super Bowl a few years ago. Back then the Patriots were going into the game undefeated and were seen as massive favorites to win and become the second team ever to go undefeated the entire season. The Giants upset the Patriots, thanks in part to this incredible play to keep them alive with about a minute left in the fourth quarter.
The Giants this year were only so-so for most of the year, but towards the end of the year they got on a roll and have been playing very, very good football since then. Their strengths are defensive line-men (Justin Tuck, Usi Umenyiora, and Jason Pierre-Paul are probably three of the top ten defensive linemen in the league and they’re all on the Giants) and the chemistry between their quarterback, Eli Manning (a really great, really long article about him) and his three wide receivers Hakeem Nicks, Victor Cruz, and Mario Manningham. Those last three might be particularly problematic for the Patriots since their weakness is definitely their defensive secondary (the guys who try to cover the wide receivers.) As commentators will probably remind us at least twenty times today, they are so weak at that position that Julian Edelman, who started the year as a wide receiver on offense, will be starting on defense. I think this is a little overstated. He’s actually pretty good on defense.
Starting an offensive player on defense is an incredibly unconventional idea… which is pretty much on par with the Patriot’s coach Bill Belichick. As Charles Pierce pointed out in this Grantland piece Belichick has been very successfully the NFL’s most anarchist coach for a long time. He’s one of the Patriots’ main (apparent at least) advantages. The other is definitely Tom Brady, their quarterback, who is playing in his fifth Super Bowl and has won three of four. The Patriots offense this year has been very heavy on short passes up the middle of the field to three targets — Wes Welker, a freakishly precise and quick 5’9″ slot receiver and two young tight ends Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski. Everything you need to know about Gronkowski you can learn from watching this play. He suffered a pretty brutal ankle sprain two weeks ago though and it’s unclear how much or how well he’ll be able to play today. My bet is that he’ll be fine.
Of course, the real star of the day is money. From betting on everything from the length of the national anthem to the color of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach to covering the commercials as if they are their own sport money is front and center the whole time.
As for joining the rest of the human race, good luck! The NFL put together a fun infographic about what people will be doing today… let’s just say that 53.5 million pounds of avocado and 8 million pounds of popcorn are involved. 8 million pounds of popcorn!! What a great day.
Enjoy,
Ezra Fischer

Is it Fair to Mock Tim Tebow for his Religion?

Dear Sports Fan,

I saw that a couple of football players were making fun of Tim Tebow for praying. What’s up with that? Do you think it’s fair to mock Tim Tebow for his religion?

Thanks,
Cody

— — —

Hey Cody,

It’s a close call, but I do think it’s okay to mock Tim Tebow’s religiosity. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, here’s a little background. Tim Tebow is a Quarterback, currently playing for the Denver Broncos in the NFL, who won two National Championships in college with the University of Florida football team. In college he became incredibly famous, mostly for his football playing prowess, but also for his religious beliefs which he was unabashedly public about. In 2009 a reporter asked him if he was a virgin and he said he was. He also showed some humor, saying, “I think you’re stunned right now,” Tebow joked with reporters after revealing his virginity. “You can’t even ask a question. … I was ready for that question, but I don’t think ya’ll were.” In 2010, Tebow publicized his beliefs further by participating in a Super Bowl commercial for Focus On the Family which (between the lines, as it were) promoted an anti-abortion message by celebrating Tebow’s mom’s decision to continue her pregnancy despite being advised by a doctor not to. As Brian Phillips writes in his well-worth reading article on Tebow on Grantland, “A trillion words have been written about this already, but suffice it to say that if you see him as the avatar of muscular Christianity in football, you know that in his bland, smiling, placidly self-confident way, he sees himself that way, too.”

These days, Tebow has somehow become even more polarizing as he has emerged in mid-season as the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos. Two weekends ago he started his first game this season against the Miami Dolphins. The Broncos were down 15-0 at half-time but ended up coming back to win the game in overtime. When they won, cameras caught Tebow kneeling in prayer as his teammates celebrated around him. This act has become a meme over the last week, leading to a website selling shirts… and to any number of photos and videos of people performing their own acts of “Tebowing.”

This past Sunday’s game did not go quite so well for the Broncos or for Tebow. The Broncos lost 45 to 10 to the Detroit Lions and Tebow played badly, throwing one interception and fumbling three times. The Lions were not satisfied just by winning, they also picked a couple choice moments to mock Tebow by adopting his now famous praying pose after sacking him or scoring a touchdown.

To your question — which was also asked in this way in the New York Times’ football blog today:

Is it all in good fun?  Tebow invites scrutiny with the very public nature of his religious beliefs, his evangelistic side. But let’s imagine that a player displayed a Muslim religious ritual or one based on Hinduism? Would it be fair to mock those displays as well? If not, why is it fair game for Tebow?

I say yes, it is fair to mock Tebow for his religious displays because Tebow, through his actions has made them part of the public domain. It’s one thing to claim that dropping to his knees in passionate prayer is not a public act even if it is on a playing field with 20+ cameras, but it’s another to claim that someone who used to list bible verses on his eye-black and who has publicly endorsed religious/cultural lobbies it treating his own religious as a private matter. Frankly, I don’t think the players on the Lions were mocking Tim Tebow for his religion, I think they were mocking a sophomore player, who they think is not very good at his craft, for what they consider a self-aggrandizing and maybe just a little prematurely self-congratulatory celebration.

What do you think?
Ezra Fischer

 

Why Do People Like Football?

Dear Sports Fan,

Am I allowed to ask the question: why do people like football?  That is my most pressing sports question.  Perhaps a better way to phrase it is: what are ten reasons to like football?  (Or even just five reasons would be great.)

Thanks,
Linnea

— — —

Dear Linnea,

You are allowed to ask this question!

  1. Violence — Okay, I’m not afraid to say it, I enjoy the violence of football. These guys hit each other really hard and when they do, bodies go flying all over the place. My enjoyment has become increasingly guilty as information about the long-term effects of hitting on football players has become more available. Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece really had me questioning whether I could watch football… for about two days until the next game came on.
  2. Gambling — I don’t bet on football games but lots and lots and lots of people do and it has driven the popularity of the sport in lots of subtle ways. For instance, you often hear about teams issuing injury reports to the league office and media. They have to do this a few times a week during the season as sanctioned by league rules. Why? Well… it’s a good bet that it has something to do with bookies needing accurate and timely information about injured players to set gambling lines.
  3. Fantasy Football — A subset of gambling, fantasy football has taken off in the last five years in a crazy way. Around twenty million people now play fantasy football, there’s a half hour television show on ESPN dedicated to fantasy football owners and our own blog has already had a fantasy football post!
  4. The Football — The football is an foot-long oblong piece of hard to pick up. There’s just nothing better than watching a combined few thousand pounds of athletic men completely determined to grab the football completely and utterly fail in the attempt. When this happens, it’s appropriate to just shake your head and say, “The Football.”
  5. Technicalities — By the logic of this reason, it’s just a matter of luck that following the NFL and not the Congress is the most popular thing to do in our country. Because one of the things that makes football so compelling is its bizarre technicalities. John Madden, the famous coach and broadcaster, played off of this when writing his first book, “When One Knee Equals Two Feet.” Often the rules are so technical and obscure that the players, coaches, refs, and announcers seem not to know them.
  6. Tactics — Unlike most other sports, where I really don’t completely understand what effect a coach can have on a game, in football the coaches make a real difference. This is mostly because the game keeps stopping all the time. Also there are little speakers in the quarterback’s (and one defensive player’s) helmet that coaches can talk into during the stoppages. All this makes the players moderately secondary and puts the viewer on a more even playing field compared to other sports. At least in football, you can scream at the television about a play knowing that at least one of the key factors in the play ALSO can’t run fast, hit hard, throw accurately, or catch worth a damn.
  7. Peer Pressure — Everybody else likes football. It won’t last forever, but for now football is the American past-time.
  8. Sitting on the Couch — There’s really nothing better than sitting down on the couch on Sunday knowing that you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything for the rest of the day. The mid-afternoon football induced slumber is also a glorious feature of the sport.
  9. Sitting at the Bar — Okay, maybe one thing can rival sitting on the couch all day. Sitting at the bar all-day!! Bars take football Sundays really seriously. I’ve been to places that label the televisions with the games they will be showing so that people showing up early can choose strategic spots where they can see the games they’re most interested in! There’s a great energy to a bar full of excited, focused fans. Also, umm… football bar-food is glorious.
  10.  Athleticism  — Yeah… it’s also fun to watch people push the boundaries of human performance. Football players regularly do things that are simply physically unavailable to the rest of us. 350 pound men should not be able to run faster than I can. People shouldn’t be able catch a ball while being assaulted and batteried. Throwing a ball 50 yards while jumping backwards doesn’t seem normal, but it sure is fun to watch it happen.
These are some of my reasons. What are yours for liking or not liking football?
Thanks for the question,
Ezra

Why Are People Obsessing About Fantasy Football Now?

Dear Sports Fan,

We’re more than a month away from the start of the NFL season, so why are the fans in my life obsessively reading about fantasy football now?

Thanks,
Yolanda

 

Dear Yolanda,

You’re absolutely right! While the first pre-season football game is tomorrow, the regular season does not start until after Labor day weekend. You’re also right that we fantasy football “owners” are starting to get into full-on research mode. There’s a few reasons for that, but first a quick refresher course on fantasy football.

Fantasy football is a game where real people bet real money on fake teams. These fake teams successes and failures are based on how the real people on their fake teams do in their real life jobs playing (real) football. Fantasy largely works as a compelling game because of its tie to the NFL which is itself extremely popular but also because it is a closed system where, although there is a large amount of luck involved, the time, work, and decisions that you put into it can have a real effect on how well something that you (and you alone) are responsible for does. It’s as close to owning a small business as many of us get.

Sometime before the NFL regular season begins, hundreds of thousands of people will gather in rooms with their laptops for their fantasy drafts. At the draft, people take turns either selecting or bidding on players for their teams. Once the season begins, owners can trade players with other owners, and not infrequently there are real players who were not initially selected in the fantasy draft that become useful to fantasy teams during the year. For the most part though, the players you get in the draft will make the difference between a successful year and an unsuccessful one. As an owner, you also have to live with these guys… for 16 weeks, you’re going to be more interested in watching them play than other players. You’re going to stress about their injuries. You will be covetous of their playing time. You will celebrate their touchdowns and bemoan their fumbles.

You can probably tell how important it is to get the right guys on your team but you might still be wondering what we could possibly be doing now… research! That’s right — the meat-head football fans are spending hours nose deep in books (well, websites mostly) reading about coaching changes, player movement, and other news about NFL teams. We’re reading thousands of words of opinion written by “fantasy football experts” who try to predict and project how players will do this year. We’re synthesizing all these projections into our own. We’ve got players divided up into tiers by position. We’re totally insane! To give you a glimpse of the far reaches of fantasy football minutia, I dare you to check out this forum conversation about how an obscure ruling on the way team statisticians assign and count tackles could effect the point production of real linebackers on your fake football team. For those too scared to click on the link, here is a direct quote from johnnyboy8102:

I have been watching the play by play in real time since 2001 and I have seen certain stadiums do the solo/assist method and others do the Assist/Assist method.

I can tell within the 1st few plays of a game which way the stat crew is going to go. The heavy assist teams (Washington and New England in particular) have been doing the assist/assist method. It is deciphered by a comma or a semicolon between the tackling players names. A comma gives a solo to the 1st player and an assist to the 2nd. While the semicolon gives assists to both players.

Not all of us quite approach the level of madness/expertise of johnnyboy8102 and his compatriots… but we may be closer than you would think…

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Why Aren't the Rules the Rules? (Part 2)

Dear Sports Fan,

Reading about the bad call in the Pittsburgh/Atlanta game last night reminded me of something I’ve always wondered. Whether it’s because the ref is looking the other way (literally or figuratively), or because of just plain human error, the rules in sports are often either not enforced, or not enforced correctly. But in many cases, it seems like people just consider that an integral part of the game! Especially given the increasing ability of technology to settle disputes, why not just come up with what the real rules ought to be, and then enforce them as thoroughly as possible?

Thanks,
Erik

— — —

(This is a continuation of an answer to this question. The first half was posted here.)

It will ruin the game:

There is some concern that adding technology to sports will ruin the game by making it too sterile or too slow. Taking the humanity out of the game could be a concern, but as much as people love discussing disputed calls at the water cooler, they also love talking about great (and terrible) performances, and great (and terrible) decisions on the part of the players and coaches. There will always be something to talk about. As for making the game too slow… uh… it could not possibly slow down the game as much as television time-outs, arguing with refs about calls, or in the case of baseball… adjusting your batting gloves, hat, glove, or cup compulsively over and over and over again.

It’s too expensive:

FIFA, the notoriously frustrating international federation of soccer refuses to add video replay to international competition because it would be too expensive for some of its member nations to implement. This is a curious reason since it seems like knowing ahead of time that you will actually know whether the ball crossed the goal line during the game shouldn’t change any element of tactics or strategy.

What do you mean “right?”

This is the heart of the answer to your question. A rule says, “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent” but does that mean “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent” or “it’s against the rules to trip an opponent if you get caught?” It’s clear from these two sports cliches which way the sports world leans: “it’s not a foul if you don’t get caught” and “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

Sports, particularly baseball is all about cheating. The last twenty years have been shaped by steroids and HGH. Before that there were amphetamines called greenies. Before that teams regularly intimidated officials or just plain assaulted them when they didn’t like the calls they were getting. It’s well know that the 1919 World Series was fixed by a few players on the White Sox and there have always been unproven rumors that the 1918 one might have been fixed as well. Cyclists are jam-packed full of drugs. They have been for a long time but “tiny electric motors…?” That’s a new one.

Even if a player is clean when he steps onto the court, he or she is rarely clean by the end of the game. Some of the most memorable plays in sports history have been the beneficiaries of some incorrect or missed calls. In soccer there is the “hand of god” goal, in basketball, Michael Jordan’s famous shot to beat the Utah Jazz is an offensive foul. Watch the video and notice Jordan’s left hand on his defender’s hip… he definitely pushes off.

Jordan is not great in spite of pushing off, he’s great partially because he pushed off and didn’t get caught.

Another way to state the question is — do we really want to have the game called “perfectly?” Here’s an example of this in the non-sports world. We certainly have the technology to identify each car and driver and what road they are on. Why shouldn’t we simply fine people whenever they go over the speed limit? Why waste all the time, money, and talent of our police departments lurking around trying to catch people when we could just automate it? I know we’ve started doing this with running some red lights, but I think that if we tried to automate speeding tickets on a large scale there would be riots and political parties would shape up around the issue… and I’m not sure which would be worse! It’s the same with most sports — a totally policed game is a boring one.

Thanks for the fun question,
Ezra Fischer

Why Aren't the Rules the Rules?

Dear Sports Fan,

Reading about the bad call in the Pittsburgh/Atlanta game last night reminded me of something I’ve always wondered. Whether it’s because the ref is looking the other way (literally or figuratively), or because of just plain human error, the rules in sports are often either not enforced, or not enforced correctly. But in many cases, it seems like people just consider that an integral part of the game! Especially given the increasing ability of technology to settle disputes, why not just come up with what the real rules ought to be, and then enforce them as thoroughly as possible?

Thanks,
Erik

 

Dear Erik,

Great question! In fact, this is such an interesting question that I’m going to break my answer into a couple blog posts.

The bad call that you’re referring to is this one:

It won’t work:

Sports rules are complicated and the action happens very, very quickly. Assuming that there is no way that we’re going to be able to rework the rules to change something as integral as “if the catcher has the ball in his glove and touches the runner before he touches home plate, he’s out” then one has to wonder how technology will help. Setting aside video replay for a second, let’s look for another solution. Okay, so — let’s put a chip in the ball. Then, let’s put some material in the catcher’s glove such that the ball knows when it’s in the glove. Great — now we’re cooking with gas! Now we have to have either more material covering the runner’s uniform… and hands, arms, head, neck, etc. Or, I guess we could just monitor whether the glove is making contact by putting some sort of pressure meeter into the ball or glove. Except that won’t work because that glove could hit the ground, the ump, or the catcher’s own body. I’m not sure any of this will work, so let’s go back and examine video replay.

Video replay is the most common form of technology in sports. Football, basketball, hockey, even baseball (believe it or not) have some form of video replay in their rules. In baseball use of video replay is restricted to basically deciding whether a ball was a home run or whether it never left the ball-park, did leave but was subject to fan interference, or left but was foul (too far off to the side to count.) Other sports have more extensive video replay rules. You may have noticed NFL coaches comically struggling to get a little red flag out of their sock, pants, shirt, etc. and throw it onto the field — they are “challenging” the ref’s judgement and calling for a video replay. Every goal in hockey is reviewed by a team of video officials in Toronto. The NBA has been able to replay shots at the end of quarters and games and just recently added video replay for unclear out-of-bounds calls.

Tennis has a system called Hawkeye. This is probably as close as it gets to your suggestion. According to Wikipedia, “all Hawk-Eye systems are based on the principles of triangulation using the visual images and timing data provided by at least four high-speed video cameras located at different locations and angles around the area of play.” In tennis the rules are objective and there is technology which insures the calls are too. Or at least can be. The computer has not totally replaced the line-judges or the referee yet… although I could see a time in the not so distant future where they could.

Most other sports are not as tidy as tennis though. Take the call at home plate that started this discussion: here’s how Jonah Keri described it on Grantland.com

If you want to use replay to make a simple yes or no call, you won’t get unanimity. And no, the fact that Lugo acted as if he were out does not constitute iron-clad proof.

Watch the replay for yourself, with the sound off.

Here’s what I did see: Lugo starts his slide well in front of the plate. Home plate umpire Jerry Meals starts to make his safe sign just as Lugo touches home with his right foot. There’s no way Meals has time to process the play and rule that Lugo had already touched home. He’s also not looking at Lugo’s foot, but rather at the swipe tag. (It should be noted that Lugo did in fact touch home with his right foot the first time — the follow-up tap of home with his left foot was unnecessary.)

Either way, replay wouldn’t have resolved the issue. Not to the point where all parties, including a purple Clint Hurdle, would have been satisfied.

And, as Keri also points out, at the time of this call, the ump had been on the field working in a high-pressure environment for six hours and 39 minutes. Furthermore — even Baseball is a nice tidy game compared to Hockey or Football. No matter how many cameras, sensors, and computers you have, there is no chance in hell you’ll be able to figure out what happened at the bottom of a pile with thousands of pounds of angry football player fighting over the ball.

More tomorrow…
Ezra Fischer 

 

Why do Baseball Players Wear Belts?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do baseball players wear belts?

Just sayin’,
Ashley

 

Dear Ashley,

Baseball, to a degree not seen in other sports, is grounded in traditions that have been around for over a hundred years. To us, and even to the players, some of the traditions make no sense – but because baseball is perceived, or wants to be perceived, as “America’s game,” something that’s unchanging and consistent throughout history, the traditions remain.

Which is a roundabout way of saying there’s no good explanation for why baseball players do a lot of things and you can just add this one to the list. When you think about baseball players’ attire, they’re actually more appropriately dressed up to go out to the club than they are to play a professional sport. Their shirt is actually a button-down, unlike every other major professional sport, where they wear jerseys of some sort. The players are given a sartorial choice when it comes to their socks: some pull their pants all the way down to their cleats, some have their socks meet their pants at the knee like an 18th century landowner. So there’s an element of (attempted) style to the baseball uniform that speaks to how the sport sees, or saw, itself.

This is a good opportunity to discuss the uniforms from the major (American) (male[1]) sports. Not how nice they are, but on whether the components of the uniform – jersey/pants/footwear/hatwear – would look most appropriate on a teenager, someone from the 80’s, a yuppie, or one of Dr. Evil’s evil henchmen – ignoring all of the logos, etc. To whit:

Basketball: Teenager. Easiest of the bunch. Tank top with long baggy shorts and sneakers. I just described half of the teenagers in America. Headwear: Some players wear headbands by personal choice – the only one of the major sports where headwear is optional, come to think of it.

Football: 80’s . When you come right down to it, football players are wearing cut-off tee shirts and (long) cut-off shorts – two regrettable legacies of the 80’s. Among many.

Hockey: Yuppies. Hockey players wear sweaters. ‘Nuff said.

Baseball: Yuppie. As discussed above, it’s a button-down tucked into long pants, complemented with a nice belt. Equally at home on the baseball diamond or at happy hour.

Golf: European yuppies. The collared shirts, the tight fitted pants, the visors – throw some sweaters around these guys’ shoulders and they could be on a yacht docked somewhere off the Riviera.

NASCAR: Dr. Evil’s evil henchmen. The jumpsuit is worn by everyone on the team. The driver gets a dark, tinted helmet. If Dr. Evil was sponsored by Home Depot, this is how his minions would dress.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. I’m barely qualified to speak on men’s fashion, so if you think I’m going to set my toe in the waters of commenting on women’s fashion, you’re out of your mind.↵

What is More Scary — a Panther or a Tiger?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is more scary —  a panther or a tiger?

Thanks,
Raule

 

Dear Raule,

Technically there doesn’t seem to be a single animal called a panther. Panthera is a genus[1] of cats which includes lions, leopards, jaguars, and tigers. In North America we also use the word panther to refer to the couger or mountain lion so I am going to assume that’s what you mean by panther. The panther is the second largest cat in North America (after the Jaguar, the South American form of Panthera) but it is more genetically akin to house cats than to lions. This shows in the sounds it makes. It cannot roar, but instead “hisses, growls, and purrs, as well as chirps and whistles.” It does not frequently attack humans although when it does it can be a serious problem. Full grown males can be up to 8 feet long and 220 pounds. By comparison, the largest tigers can be up to 11 feet long and weigh in at 660 pounds! They are the solitary animals and unusual for cats, they are strong swimmers that enjoy the water. According to wikipedia, “Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey.” This really makes me feel good about our species…

Now in terms of sport, I can only assume that you are referring to the Carolina Panthers (NFL) and the Detroit Tigers (MLB.) The Detroit Tigers are having a pretty good season, having won 47 and lost 42 games so far. If the season ended today they would be half a game[2] out of a playoff spot. The Carolina Panthers on the other hand are spending the summer locked out by their owner. Last season they were by far the worst team in the league, only able to win 2 games out of 16.

A fun game to play is trying to categorize all of the team names in a sport. Take the NFL. You may think there are a lot of cat names, and there are: Bengals, Jaguars, Panthers, and Lions — but there are more birds: Cardinals, Seahawks, Falcons, Ravens, and Eagles. The largest category that I can come up with is wild west: 49ers, Redskins, Cowboys, Broncos, Chiefs, Colts, and Bills. Another category I enjoy is the mythical creature: Titans, Giants, Saints… How about industry? This category has a few teams: Steelers, Packers, 49ers (again,) Cowboys (again,) Raiders, and Jets (maybe.) Fun for the whole family!

Thanks for the[3] question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Remember “King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex” — Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.↵
  2. A game behind in wins, but having played one fewer game than the team they are behind.↵
  3.  Admittedly weird↵