What is a set piece in soccer?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a set play in soccer?

Thanks,
Kimberly

Dear Kimberly,

A set piece in soccer is any play that begins with the ball at a standstill following a stoppage resulting from the ball going out of bounds or a foul being called. Set pieces or set plays are unique in soccer because they are the only times when the ball is in the complete possession of one team, without the other team being allowed to try to get it from them. The team with the ball has all the time they want, within reason, to set themselves up in whatever position or formation they want before they put the ball back into play. Set pieces are much rarer in soccer than in other sports. American football is on the other extreme end of the spectrum. Football has only set plays — everything stops and starts between each play. Baseball is the same way. Basketball approaches soccer’s fluidity but there are far more stoppages between plentiful baskets, fouls, and time-outs.

Set pieces in soccer are very valuable. Over the past five years or so, the percentage of goals scored during set plays in top-flight soccer has varied from around 25% to close to 50%. One quarter to one half of all goals scored in soccer are the result of set plays! In the 2014 World Cup, the championship team, Germany, averaged a set play goal per game, the highest in the tournament.

For something that’s so important, it’s surprising that there is such variation in how teams think about and practice set plays. Some teams practice them obsessively and even study how opposing teams try to defend them so they can use their opportunities even more effectively. Other teams look like they’re almost… well, winging them — playing them by ear. Trusting to the instincts and ideas of players on the field to figure out what to do with them as they come up. I have two potential theories for why this is.

The first is a cultural theory and it absolutely relies on gross national stereotypes, so it’s worth saying that I believe these tendencies are completely fluid and have absolutely nothing to do with anything integral to the people involved. For whatever reason, some national traditions of soccer are more focused on fluid play than others. English soccer is on one extreme — the English tend to play long ball, kicking the ball far in the air and then going up to get it. As such, the English are more likely to practice free kicks obsessively as an extension of their historic/cultural tendencies. The Brazilians are the opposite. They’re traditionally known for playing a fluid style based more on short passing, movement off the ball, and brilliant individual skill. Brazilian teams would stereotypically be less likely to spend time in practice working on set pieces because they are kind of the antithesis of how they like to play. Of course, just to make sure we don’t go too far overboard with this theory, we have the counter-example of the Brazilian fullback Roberto Carlos who was one of the best on set pieces ever:

I experienced a tiny microcosm of the cultural theory as a kid. My youth team was coached by a Guatemalan immigrant and we barely ever practiced set pieces. The teams we played against, particularly one run by a German-American group, had clearly practiced them a lot.

The second theory is that set pieces are a chance for less skilled teams to beat more skilled teams, so they are the ones that practice set pieces more. Keeping possession of the ball in a soccer game is all about talent. Creating a goal in the flow of the game is a challenge that can only be achieved with dominant skill or incredible luck. Set pieces, however, can be done with mostly precision and discipline. As The Guardian suggested in a 2009 article on this subject, there’s “a feeling that the top sides do not need to expend so much time and energy working on breaking down opponents through set-pieces when the goals tend to flow so easily from open play.” Whether it’s true or not, there’s a sense that practicing set pieces can only happen to the detriment of developing more important facets of the game. This is an argument sometimes used against how the United States develops soccer players.

Soccer has a variety of types of set pieces. Tomorrow, we’ll go into detail on each type of set piece: the corner kick, goal kick, free kick, and penalty kick.

Until then,
Ezra Fischer

Balancing diplomacy and passion in sports

There’s room for all types in sports. Or that’s what we’re told. “If you can play, you can play” is the slogan of a great organization working for inclusion in sports. White, black, gay, straight, male, female, young, old, everyone can play sports. But what about people who lose their temper easily? What about shy people? How accepting are sports of different personality types? Two articles came across my desk recently that make me think about the question of balancing diplomacy and passion in sports.

One of my favorite parts of writing Dear Sports Fan is reading other great writers cover sports in a way that’s accessible and compelling for the whole spectrum from super-fans to lay people. Here are selections from the best articles of the last week on the subject of attitude:

Boogie Cousins and The Upside of a Bad Attitude

by Bethlehem Shoals for GQ

Demarcus Cousins, mysteriously nicknamed Boogie, is one of the most talented young basketball players in the NBA. For pretty much his whole career, even in college, he’s been known as a player who let his emotions get in the way of his success. Bethlehem Shoals takes this idea and examines it for what it’s worth — which might not be that much. Why, Shoals asks, do we feel the need for our sports starts to fit into a single stereotype?

Cousins is exciting to watch because he plays with feeling; he’s unpredictable and at times, ecstatic. When he decides to take over a game or clinch a win, it’s as much a matter of will as it is ability. Like Russell Westbrook, he spurs his team to greater heights by wearing his emotions on his sleeve; there’s a range there that somehow seems more honest, or authentic, than more guarded, less expressive players.

Cousins is undoubtedly a post player but he’s always a few steps out from the basket, allowing him an extra move or two to try and throw off defenders. You could argue that this space is also where the emotion, the excitement builds. With Cousins, there’s a real tension and release. He gets the ball, gets worked up, and more often than not, pays it off with a big play.

Asking Cousins to change his personality wouldn’t have just been pointless—it could have been disastrous. A player like Davis can change his game in certain ways, according to a certain script, because it suits him as a person. Cousins has taken a different path, finding a way to channel his energy in a way that helps, rather than hurts, himself and all those around him. We’ve seen it before and yet somehow, players who get the “troubled” label are never allowed to just be themselves and evolve accordingly.

Meet Tom King, one of USSF’s most important people behind the scenes

by Grant Wahl for Sports Illustrated

While wearing your emotions on your sleeve might be a good idea on the basketball court, it’s certainly not in the game that Tom King plays. As Grant Wahl explores in this article, the arranging and scheduling of international soccer games is as complex and sometimes as confrontational as the sport itself.

One of the leading practitioners of U.S. foreign diplomacy is a guy who schedules soccer games… It’s just like diplomacy. Countries may say one thing privately and another thing publicly, and it’s hard to know what’s really going to happen until you sign a treaty (i.e., a contract).

“It’s about two organizations trying to come together on some common ground with regard to economic conditions, technical decisions and the best possible dates to play. These relationships have been built up over many, many years. And our philosophy is that if things go wrong in the negotiations or if any federation reneges on something they had perhaps previously agreed, or we had an agreement to play in principle but it didn’t come through, we always take the high road.”

Stadium prints for sports fans

We’re always on the look-out for tasteful ways to represent beloved sports teams in home decor. Items that fit this bill are worth their weight in, well, not gold at current prices, but aluminum at least. They give the sports fan in the household a way to express pride and love while simultaneously giving their family, partner, or housemates a chance to express their own tasteful sense of home propriety. The large selection of colorful stadium prints from City Prints fits the bill on every detail.

City Prints is an online fine-art print shop founded and operated by Tony and Katie Rodono that specializes in prints of places. The idea for City Prints came to them years after Tony started a traffic counting company. That business didn’t take off but Tony took away an enjoyment of drawing intersections. When the couple had a child, Tony writes on the about page of the City Prints website, he “realized the importance of place” and the idea of making fine-art prints out of locations was born. City Prints sells a wide variety of map-art. I’ve personally purchased one of the few non-map prints, an Apple II computer schematic, so I can vouch for the quality of their work. Most of what they produce are maps of areas as large as the earth and as small as a sports stadium or race track.

All of the prints are available as 12 x 12 prints alone, matted, or matted and framed. You can also get them in 30 x 30 Gallery-Wrapped canvases. Here are some of my favorites with links to the specific product and category so that you can hunt for the print that’s most meaningful to you or the sports fan in your life.

Race Tracks

Churchill Downs — the legendary site of the Kentucky Derby. Put this print up in your living room and mix some refreshing mint juleps.

Talladega Track — for the NASCAR/Will Farrell fan in you(r life.)

College Football

Michigan Stadium — called the Big House, this is one of the original and ultimate bowls in sports.

College Basketball

Cameron Indoor Stadium — the home of the Duke Blue Devils, where Coach Krzyzewski roams the floor and the students stand the entire game.

Dean E. Smith Center — home of Duke’s main Rivals, the North Carolina Tarheels. This is a fair and balanced blog.

NFL Football

Lambeau Field — home to the only collectively owned major professional sports franchise, the Green Bay Packers, Lambeau field is a national treasure.

NBA Basketball

Madison Square Garden — called basketball’s Mecca, Madison Square Garden in Manhattan is home to the New York Knicks but has also been an important location for the history of college basketball. It hosted the Big East championships for decades.

NHL Hockey

Bell Centre — What the New York Yankees are to baseball, the Montreal Canadiens are to hockey. The legendary franchise has won almost exactly one quarter of all the Stanley Cups in history.

Soccer

White Hart Lane — City Prints has a wide selection of international and domestic soccer stadiums but if you’re looking for a typically British design, the map of Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium is unmatched.

The lesson of Randy Moss

Rand University, the latest in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series of documentary films about sports, premiered last night. The film was directed by Marquis Daisy and produced by Bomani Jones. The film tells the story of Randy Moss, one of the greatest wide receivers in football history, specifically his growth from a middle schooler in Rand, West Virginia, to being drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by the Minnesota Vikings. Rand University is simultaneously a familiar, almost cliched story, and one that doesn’t get told nearly enough.

Randy Moss grew up in poor, predominantly black, rural West Virginia, in a town called Rand. He was a multi sport athlete, excelling at everything he tried his hand at: baseball, basketball, track, and football. Moss was raised in a church going family by a strong mother. His father was not in his life. Rand was a small enough community that it sent its children to nearby DuPont High School which was 98% white. Even (or maybe especially) as a star athlete at the school, Moss felt the racial tension acutely. He says in the film that he got into one racial fight every year at high school. In his senior year, Moss supported a fellow black student in a fight against a white classmate who had written “All niggers must die” on his desk. The white student was beaten badly and suffered, among other injuries, a lacerated spleen. The law was brought in and Moss plead guilty to assault charges and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. This conviction caused Notre Dame, the college Moss had his heart set on playing football for, to drop him from their team. Notre Dame helped Moss arrange attending Florida State a similarly strong college football team but with a well-known propensity for working with players with convictions in their past. One of the conditions of the arrangement was that Moss would redshirt (practice but not play) during his freshman year. Moss went along with this program, even though that can be a difficult thing for a young player to accept.

His freshman year went by smoothly but back in West Virginia, during the summer afterwards, Moss ran into more trouble. He was caught smoking weed which broke his probation and he was thrown back in jail. While there, he learned that Florida State wouldn’t take him back for his sophomore year. In interviews with Moss from prison and in footage from his subsequent trial, Moss sounds coached but sincere. It seems strange now, but in the context of mid-nineties fear/hatred towards black athletes following the OJ Simpson trial and a generally much more moralistic atmosphere (see congressional hearings about Eminem’s lyrics, the Clinton sex scandal, etc.) Moss came very close to losing his athletic future. As with almost everything, there was a more local context that may have effected his situation too. Moss claims that he was treated harshly by the legal system because he ignored the University of West Virginia while choosing a college. In retrospect, this seems totally reasonable given what we know from the Jameis Winston story at Florida State about the insidious influence of big-time college football programs in law enforcement. Moss had also fathered a child with a white woman while in high-school; not a popular move in mid-90s West Virginia (or almost ever in U.S. history.)

Moss found his one-last-shot at nearby Marshall University, a second tier college football program. This university provided Moss an opportunity that others couldn’t — because it was slated to play one more season in 1-AA before moving up to the top level 1-A college football league, Moss would not need to sit out a year because of his transfer. He could do what he wanted to do, what he lived to do: play football. And play he did. Moss played astoundingly well. He basically could not be stopped. Marshall’s coach Bob Pruitt said of Moss, “We had a simple package. If there was one guy out there guarding him, we threw him the ball.” Moss set all sorts of records that year and then, against tougher competition the following year, he did it again. He won the Fred Biletnikoff award given to the best wide receiver in the country and was a finalist for the Heisman trophy.

The message of the film is just how fragile the path to success is for even the most talented poor kids. The story of Moss’ friend and teammate, Sam Singleton Jr., was a sad reminder that just a smidge less talent and a few more misteps can easily tip the scales and consign someone to the tragic almost-inevitability of poverty. The term Rand University, which Moss sometimes claimed in NFL introductions when not repping Marshall University, was a long-lived sad, joking truism of their home town. A resident of Rand in the film explains that Rand University meant hanging out next to the 7-11 instead of going to play college or professional sports. It meant being in jail or arrested for drugs. It meant that something would go wrong and you wouldn’t be able to take the next step. No single image could make this point more poignant than the image of Randy Moss at his assault trial wearing ankle shackles. To really understand this image, you need to know how sports fans think about Moss. Grantland’s Andrew Sharp wrote an article about Moss to accompany the film. Here’s how he described Moss:

There may have been better players than Moss, but nobody ever made football look easier. He could run through defenses designed to break him in half, and run 10 yards past coverage designed to keep him from going over the top. He was faster than anyone in the league, but he never looked like he was going full speed. He could catch anything, outjump anyone, and when he was pissed, he played better.

The image of Randy Moss, who could not be stopped on a football field, literally shackled at the ankles is a bitter reminder of how tenuous the path out of poverty can be.

Rand University tells its story through one athlete’s. Michael Lewis’ book, The Blind Side, tells a similar story about Michael Oher, an offensive lineman. Lewis, an economist, more explicitly uses Oher’s tale to make a cultural point. He asks rhetorically how much raw talent could be harnessed if we, as a society, could make the path out of poverty more secure for young, poor, often black, kids? That’s exactly what U.S. Soccer is trying to do. In a wonderful article that coincidentally came out on the same day as Rand University, Stanley Kay examines the U.S. Soccer’s outreach program for Sports Illustrated. Youth soccer, as exists today, often overlooks poorer, often non-white children, because of the cost of playing on teams and maintaining soccer fields. These under-served populations end up playing more informal or street soccer. One of the interesting messages of Kay’s article is that not just are we missing out on a percentage of athletes who could become international soccer stars, because we don’t find ways to develop kids who grew up playing in street soccer games, we miss out on the creativity and ball-handling skills that informal soccer develops. Doug Andreassen, an important figure in the article, is the Chairman of U.S. Soccer’s Diversity Task Force tells Kay about:

The chemistry between Dempsey and fellow Seattle Sounders forward Obafemi Martins, who grew up playing street soccer in Nigeria. “You see this magic they have between them as forwards. It’s no-look passes, back-heel passes, stopping and starting the ball. You just don’t see that in players who come from structured backgrounds,” he says with admiration. “You can’t teach that.”

It’s inspiring to read about Andreassen and other people working to systematically harness the power of our entire country for their sport while at the same time working to make our country a better place, at least for athletic children of all colors and backgrounds. If they need any more inspiration, they should watch Rand University. Sure, Randy Moss grew up playing organized sports from a young age, but he credited some of his play to the informal game, razzle-dazzle, that he spent hours and hours playing as a kid in Rand, West Virginia. Moss had the talent to escape, he had the discipline and competitive drive to escape, but to make things easier for the next Randy Mosses, we need people like Marquis Daisy, Bomani Jones, Michael Lewis, and Stanley Kay telling their stories and people like Doug Andreassen working full-time to make our society a better place.

Rand University, the 30 for 30 documentary will re-air Saturday, November 15, at 7:30 a.m. ET on ESPN2 and Saturday, November 22, at 3 a.m. ET on ESPNU. Set your DVRs.

Monday, October 20

Football, football, football: It was another full day of football. Sunday culminated with a record-breaking moment from Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning but there was lots of action before that. Get all the information you need to engage in football small-talk from our NFL One Liners column.
NASCAR single elimination: Three NASCAR drivers needed to win Sunday’s race to stay alive in the playoffs, called the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Only one driver could win. That was Brad Keselowski who needed and got a little help on the last lap from Matt Kenseth. Coincidentally, the two of them had gotten into a physical altercation after the previous week’s race. NASCAR, it’s like professional wrestling except with cars.
Line: Car racing, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows.
Liverpool gets a gift: Own goals (scoring on yourself) happen in all sports but they’re most tragic in soccer where goals happen so rarely. Queens Park Rangers had climbed their way back to a 2-2 tie against Liverpool yesterday when, right before the game ended, Steven Caulker scored against his own team! Gah!
Line: Losing on an own goal in extra time has got to be the worst (sports) thing ever!

News Clippings: October 18

Brian Phillips is one of my favorite writers out there these days. He is overwhelmingly enthusiastic and incisive about the subjects he chooses. In this article, he says farewell to the U.S. Soccer player, Landon Donovan, who retired from international play this week.

Inside Out

By Brian Phillips for Grantland

Donovan carried a zone of retirement around with him, the way fighters sometimes seem to move in a zone of potential violence. There was always this slight hint of removal, as if he were surrounded by a Photoshop blur set to 1 or 2 percent — hardly detectable, but enough to let you know that you were seeing him, and being seen by him, through a force field of self-created privacy.

He refused to be anything but himself… But what he was — complex, reflective, observant, careful with himself — was so out of step with our expectations for a major sports star that he left us with a sense of something unresolved.

Eric Kester is a former football player and NFL ball boy. This gives him a rare perspective with which to reflect on the violence and virtue of football.

What I Saw as an N.F.L. Ball Boy

By Eric Kester for The New York Times

Spend an extended period of time behind the N.F.L. curtain, as I did, see eerily subdued postgame locker rooms filled with vacant stares and hear anguished screams echoing from the training room, and you’ll understand how the physical and emotional toll these players endure is devastating enough to erode the morality of a good man or exacerbate the evils of a bad one.

This is not to say players who commit crimes deserve even a little exoneration. But what they and all N.F.L. players do deserve — and need — are improved resources to help them cope with the debilitating consequences of on-field ferocity.

The Allrounder is a great new site that “looks at how sport impacts communities, shapes culture, and taps bodies and emotions.” Created by a history professor, a senior research fellow, and an analyst at a think-tank, the Allrounder has a valuable scholarly presence without being pedantic in the least. I look forward to more great pieces from their writers in the coming months. This article about the singing culture of Welsh Rugby comes from their Guide For the Global Fan series.

Welsh Rugby Songs

by Daryl Leeworthy for The Allrounder

The oldest Welsh rugby song of all is “Men of Harlech,” a stirring tune penned in the eighteenth century that tells of Welsh defiance in the face of the English invader during a medieval siege that lasted seven years. It was originally sung to accompany the Welsh team as they entered the pitch, the “battlefield” if you like, and is still a key part of the pre-match build up. Then there’s the comic classic “Sospan Fach” which is literally about cat scratches, an unwell and then dead servant called Dafydd, a soldier called Dai who can’t seem to tuck his shirt in properly, and a couple of saucepans. There’s no real logic to the song but it established itself as a firm favourite of rugby crowds in Llanelli and is now one of those songs that every Welsh person knows, regardless of whether they like rugby or not.

But on the whole rugby songs are much less problematic than soccer songs, there’s almost none of the hostility that’s present in the songs sung at an Old Firm derby in Glasgow for instance. That’s not to say that some of them aren’t obviously couched in a degree of playful dislike… But generally they’re harmless and build on a Romanticised stereotype we have of ourselves as a nation. At their heart they seem to say it doesn’t matter if we lose (as we often do) to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, France, or Ireland; as long we beat England by a single point, it’s worth it in the end.

The European Champions League is an exciting tournament for fans but it might be even more exciting for team owners. Just qualifying for the tournament is a financial windfall. This article looks at one unintended consequence of this money — the destabilization of small soccer leagues. In this case, the author focuses on the Swedish league.

A Glamorous Event Injects Cash and Concerns

by Sam Borden for The New York Times

Money is always front and center in professional sports, and it is no different in European soccer. Malmo won the Swedish league last season and made its way through two qualifying [Champions’ League] rounds before arriving in the 32-team group stage. For its accomplishments, Malmo will receive more than 78 million Swedish kronor (more than $10 million), regardless of what happens during its six group stage games.

Tony Ernst, the chairman of the Swedish supporters group that encompasses fans of teams in the country’s top two divisions, said the sudden influx of money for Malmo — which is already poised to win the Swedish league again this season — had left many fans worried about competitive balance.

“Traditionally, the Swedish league has been very hard to win two times in a row — it is very open,” Ernst said in an interview. “I think there is a fear that this will make the other teams’ chances that much harder.”

This week marked the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco area. So many people around the country remember that earthquake, not just because it was strong and damaging, but because it happened during the pre-game telecast of the World Series. Sports fans experienced it live through the lens of baseball. Well-known baseball writer, Richard Justice, was there and shares some of his personal memories of the quake in this article, including waking up in a hotel room to find that the furniture was all out of place.

Remembering the Quake

by Richard Justice for Sports on Earth

And yet, in the worst of times, these two great American cities did themselves proud, too. This is the part of the story that sometimes gets lost in the retelling. We focus on the shaking and the death and the damage.

We laugh at how we huddled in dark hotels and jumped as the aftershocks came in waves over the next few days. We remember the one baseball writer who got stuck in traffic because he was, as usual, running late and never got to Candlestick Park. We occasionally pass over the best part of the story. That’s how people pulled together and helped one another and resolved to rebuild and carry on.

I would just about guarantee that those of us who experienced the earthquake and then stayed around the city until the World Series resumed 10 days later would tell you the same thing.

If they didn’t love the Bay Area before, they fell in love with it in those two weeks. And if they already loved it, they had those feelings reinforced. There was such a spirit and a resolve it was impossible not to be inspired.

Thursday, October 16

The Royals are in the World Series: The Kansas City Royals continued their magical post season run last night, beating the Orioles 2-1 in the game and 4-0 in the best-four-out-of-seven series. The Royals will host the first game of the World Series next Tuesday. This gives us plenty of time to appreciate their achievement so far! Winning eight games in a row is unusual; eight playoff games in a row is almost unheard of; eight playoff games after being one of the least successful sports franchises in any sport in the country for the last 25 years? Incredible.
Line: There’s plenty of time to analyze and project and worry before Tuesday. Let’s just enjoy today.
One small step for the Giants: The San Francisco Giants are one game away from joining the Royals for a date in the World Series after beating the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 thanks to some great pitching by Yusmeiro Petit and some not-so-great fielding by the Cardinals. The Giants won the World Series in the last two even years (2010 and 2012) so if you’re really superstitious, you’re beginning to wonder if something is up here…
Line: The Cardinals keep shooting themselves metaphorically in the foot. I just hope that if they lose, they don’t lose on another mistake.
What’s Next: Game five is today at 8 p.m. ET on FS1.
U.S. women win but don’t inspire: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team won its first World Cup qualifying game last night 1-0 against Trinidad & Tobago. A win is a win, but it won’t be analyzed that way by fans of the team. We expect domination from a team that is looking to win its first world cup in 16 years next year in Canada, especially against an opponent who we normally beat decisively. That said, the team will take the win and move on. They’ve got four more games in the next eleven days, all of which are opportunities to improve.
Line: Sure, we won, but if last night’s performance is representative, we won’t win the World Cup next year.
What’s Next: A World Cup qualifying match tomorrow, Friday, October 17, at 8 p.m versus Guatemala on FS1.

Wednesday, October 15

Royals yet to lose: Remember way back when the baseball playoffs started and the very first game was a freakishly exciting one between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics? The Royals haven’t lost a game since winning that one. They beat their next opponents 3-0 in a best three-out-of-five and after last night’s game, they’re up 3-0 in their best-four-out-of-seven series with the Baltimore Orioles.
Line: The Royals might never lose again!
What’s Next: Game four, today, 4 p.m. ET on TBS
Giants sneak by Cardinals: The other series remaining in the baseball playoffs has been a lot closer. The Giants lead two games to one after just barely beating the Cardinals yesterday thanks to a wild throw by a player trying to field a bunt in the tenth inning.
Line: The other series might not be close but this one is. That’s two games in a row that ended 5-4.
What’s Next: Game four, today, 8 p.m. ET on FS1
Honduras even with the United States: The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team played an exhibition game last night against Honduras. After an early goal by Jozy Altidore in his first return to the world stage since he pulled up lame in the first game of the World Cup, the U.S. tried to hold on to the lead. They weren’t successful thanks to a goal in the 86th minute by Maynor Figueroa. That’s two games in a row that the team let up a goal in the last five minutes — not a good trend, even in exhibition games.
Line: I know they’re just friendly games but you never like to see the team concede late goals.

News Clippings: Sunday, October 12

This article profiles former NBA player Keyon Dooling and his life long struggle to come to terms with and recover from being abused as a child. It’s a fascinating and eventually uplifting piece that reminds us that no matter how big, strong, and fearless athletes look when they’re on stage, they are real people with their own struggles.

Keyon Dooling’s Secret

By Jordan Ritter Conn for Grantland

Now, when Dooling looks back on those years, he sees how he tried to cope with the trauma of his past. He sees himself in fourth grade, sneaking to his father’s liquor cabinet, pouring himself strong drinks and sipping them until the world was gone. He sees himself in middle school, smoking weed with friends, letting the drug ease the anxiety he’d felt since that afternoon. He sees himself at that same age, flirting with girls and then taking them home. The more girls he slept with, he thought, the more he proved that he was no longer that little boy.

Basketball helped. On the court, he could assert his dominance. With the ball in his hands, he never felt like a victim. He loved the power his talent gave him, the confidence that grew from knowing that almost every kid in his school and his neighborhood could only dream of doing what he could do on a hardwood floor. The first time he dunked — as a freshman, in a game — he felt invincible. As he grew older, the memory of that afternoon faded, but the coping strategies remained.

This past week, I reblogged a piece about how baseball fans need to decide — do they want a clean game or an exciting game. This triggered a back and forth with a baseball fan and friend of Dear Sports Fan who sent me this well-written piece as a rebuttal. I have to admit, after reading this defense of the pace of baseball, I question how much of my attitudes towards the sport are the product of hearing other people’s cliched criticism.

What Pace of Game Problem?

By Russell Carleton for Fox Sports

Allowing for the fact that some of the rule changes would spawn some workarounds, you might save 20 minutes off the average game. All it would cost you is the clock-less-ness of baseball, the idea of free substitution, and a small piece of the integrity of the game. In other words, baseball would become a different game and for not much benefit.

What I find interesting is that baseball seems to have a pace of game problem because everyone says that it does… Maybe it’s just time that baseball recognized that there are people out there who enjoy a slower game and stopped trying to be all things to all people… Baseball should simply embrace the fact that it is a slower game and market itself accordingly. It’s a feature, not a bug. There’s no pace of game problem because there’s nothing morally superior about playing rushed games that take two and a half hours instead of three, no matter what United States culture tries to say.

This essay grapples with the difficulty of producing accurate statistics comparing NFL players to… well, to who, exactly? That’s part of the problem. With all of the scary statistics flying around about the health effects of playing professional football, it’s very hard to know what is real and what isn’t. I hope someone can take the work of this charmingly skeptical article and do the hard work to produce more reasonable and accurate scientific studies. There’s undeniably something scary happening to some percent of pro football players. Let’s figure it out.

NFL Players Die Young. Or Maybe They Live Long Lives.

By Daniel Engber for Slate

For every 770 men who play the sport on a professional level, we can expect one extra death from ALS. (Extra deaths from Alzheimer’s are even more unusual.)

Any extra death is cause for grave concern, but if you look at other, much more common deadly conditions, the change in risk goes the other way. The same dataset suggests that for every 770 football retirees, we should expect 13 fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease and 14 fewer from cancer. So while it’s true that Alzheimer’s and ALS rates among NFL athletes could reasonably be described as “through the roof,” the number of players’ lives saved from heart disease and cancer exceeds the number of lives lost to those diseases by 2,150 percent.

But the methods used to find these stats raise a familiar and important question: Should football players really be compared to average men their age, of any race or body size or income level? How much does the choice of analysis affect its outcome?

So is it better to control for income or race, or should studies strive for both? And what about body size?

These may sound like simple questions, but they’re exceedingly difficult to answer. To some extent, the best approach depends on how you think about the NFL, and what point you’d like to make.

This charming story about the financial plight of the Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago women’s national soccer teams reminds us that not all athletes have financial support on NFL levels. Sometimes it takes a desperate tweet and a kind opponent to get things started so that the Clinton foundation can finish things up!

Haiti pledges money to Trinidad and Tobago soccer

By Kurt Voigt and Anne M. Peterson for the Associated Press

Upon getting word that the Trinidad and Tobago women’s national soccer team might not even have enough money for lunch, Haiti’s team took a look at its fundraising for World Cup qualifying — an account totaling a little over $1,300 — and decided to turn it over to the competition.

Thursday, October 9

Finally a good Thursday Night NFL Football Game — Thursday Night National Football League games have been taking heat in the media lately. It’s one thing that we all sort of know they’re cruel and unusual for players who get only three days to heal their bodies between a Sunday game and having to play again Thursday. It’s another thing that they’re not fun to watch. Every Thursday game this year had been a blow-out. That’s when the complaints really heated up. The game last night between the Indianapolis Colts and the Houston Texans looked like it was going to follow suit after the Colts went up 24-0 in the first half. “Here we go again, another blow out” people were saying all over the world. The Texans came back to make it interesting though and had the ball, down only five points, with two minutes to go. After their quarterback fumbled, the game was over and the comeback attempt had come up short.
Line: At least it wasn’t another boring Thursday Night game like it looked like it was going to be.
Hockey’s back again — Last night was the second night in the National Hockey League season but the first for many teams. There were twelve games played last night and if you were a fan of one of the teams playing their first game, you were excited about the start of the season.
Line: I know it sounds wimpy but I just want my team to get through the first week with no major injuries. Seems like players are falling like leaves this year.
International soccer? — It’s not the world cup but the countries of Europe are playing each other in games to qualify for the next European Championships. Some games, like England’s 5-0 win over San Marino are mismatches in size and power, but others like Russia and Sweden playing to a 1-1 draw are exciting and even rivalries. The most interesting game was Slovakia’s 2-1 win over Spain, whose World Cup swoon now looks more like the end of an era than a glitch in the matrix.
Line: Every “golden generation” of soccer players comes to an end. Looks like Spain’s generation is at its end now.