TV Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Dear Sports Fan

Understanding Tour de France TV Graphics

I’ve been watching the Tour de France since I was a little kid and it’s still often hard for me to figure out what the heck is going on during its television broadcast. A bicycle race is a complex thing. There are dozens of riders, riding in teams of nine, each with different uniforms and riding with different goals in mind. The riders start each day in a big clump, called the peloton, but before long, they have split up into groups that may be miles apart from one another. The television coverage jumps from group to group with cameras on motorcycles and helicopters. The announcers do their best to keep viewers informed about who and what they’re watching at any given moment, but even they sometimes have a hard time (remember that they, like us, are elsewhere watching the race unfold on screens,) telling the difference between one powerful tiny cyclist and another powerful tiny cyclist. Added to all this chaos are graphics on the top and bottom of the TV screen packed full of information. If you learn how to read these, they can actually help you keep track of what’s going on. Let’s go through a couple screenshots from yesterday’s stage.

Okay, there’s a lot going on here. Start with the obvious. We’ve got two dudes with their shirts undone, wearing spandex, and bicycling really, really hard. Forget all that, let’s focus on the information at the top and bottom of the screen.

On the top left is a black and white checkered flag and a distance, 5.9 miles. The checkered flag denotes the finish line, just like it does in car racing, and the distance is how far the cyclist leading today’s stage of the race is from the finish line. The Tour de France is broken up into 21 days or stages of racing. Each stage has its own winner but the person with the lowest combined time at the end is the overall winner.
Continuing on from the top left, the rest of the information at the top shows how the riders have broken up during the day of racing. We can tell that two cyclists (maybe these two guys,) are leading this stage of the race. The next group of riders is fourteen strong and includes a rider wearing a yellow jersey, which is an honor only the leader of the overall race (at the end of yesterday’s stage) is given. A minute behind the front pair, and somewhere behind the group of fourteen (usually they’re pretty good at getting timing on all the riders, but this was going up a steep, winding mountain, and I guess they lost track of some of it) is another group of three riders. Behind them is poor Mister Gadret, cycling all alone, and behind him is the peloton. The peloton is a name used to refer to the biggest group of riders on the road. At the start of each stage, there is only the peloton and everyone is in it. Sometimes though, by the end, there isn’t a group big enough to be referred to in that way. The race has broken the peloton.
I mentioned at the start that not all the riders in the Tour de France have the same goals. In addition to the yellow jersey of the overall winner, there are other prizes to fight for. One of them is the white jersey competition for the best young rider. How young do you have to be to qualify for this competition? You must be under 26. At the bottom of the screen, the scroller is showing the standings for the white jersey. Michal Kwiatkowski is in third place, only a minute and thirty eight seconds behind the leader. That’s a minute and thirty eight seconds overall, not in today’s stage.

Let’s try another:

This is earlier in the race — there’s 42 kilometers left, which even I know is more than 5.9 miles.
The race has yet to develop and there are a string of solo riders out in front of the main group, the peloton, which still includes the yellow jersey clad overall leader of the tour.
In this shot, you can see that each of the riders has a time next to his name at the top. The times are all how far behind they are from the rider leading this stage. So, L. Mate is only 13 seconds behind J. Bakelants and a 1:34 behind the lead not 1:34 behind J. Bakelants and 2:55 behind the leader.
Down at the bottom, the scroll is simply reiterating the information at the top, showing that the third chase group, which we know from the top consists of J. Pineau, is 2:40 behind the leader, A. De Marchi.

The Tour de France is the ultimate challenge for its riders but it doesn’t have to be for its viewers. I hope these pointers about how to make sense of the TV graphics will help you enjoy watching the Tour de France.

Time for Other Television

tv watching — Now is your time for other television. Hit it!

This is a public service announcement on behalf of all of you who share a television with a sports fan. Now is your time for other television! It’s a brief lull in the sports calendar. The excitement of baseball’s opening games has worn out and the realization that there are 155 more games to go has descended. March Madness is over. Football is a distant mirage. The NBA and NHL regular seasons are wrapping up but the playoffs are coming soon. The NHL playoffs begin in five days, the NBA playoffs in less than a month. Now is your chance to dominate! Binge-watch True Detective, Downton Abbey, or Orange is the New Black. Watch new episodes of Mad Men or Game of Thrones live. Put your feet up and lackadaisically jock the remote while you go through episodes of some pleasurable show like the Real Housewives of North Dakota or Say Yes to the Dress, Paisley Edition.

The television is yours, enjoy it!

[Editor’s note: if you live with a golf fan, your results may vary. The biggest golf tournament of the year, The Masters, just started today. But really, if you live with a golf fan, you already know this.]

What is the Winter Classic Hockey Game?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the Winter Classic hockey game? Should I watch it?

Thanks,
Sam

— — —

Dear Sam,

The Winter Classic is the name given to an NHL regular season game scheduled on New Year’s Day with a special twist: it’s played outdoors. This year’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be televised on NBC at 1 pm ET. The game will be played on a rink constructed in the center of the University of Michigan’s football stadium, nicknamed “the big house.” The USA Today writes that 107,000 people are expected to attend, which would break the record for attendance at a hockey game. There’s lots of reasons to watch, even if you’re not a hockey fan. Here are a few of them:

The Winter Classic Makes Professional Sports into a Game

An argument I hear from some of my friends who prefer college sports over professional ones is that making a business out of a game ruins the fun of the game. Well, for one day, at least, the Winter Classic transforms hockey back into a game. NHL players are from all over the world but most of them grew up in Canada, Scandanavia, or Russia, and many of them grew up playing outside on frozen ponds as well as inside on rinks devoted to youth hockey leagues. Listen to what some of the players have to say about playing outside:

“As soon as everyone walked in it was like a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds in here” — Red Wings Goalie, Jimmy Howard

“I got chills coming into the building. You grow up playing on outdoor rinks as a kid… it’s going to be a special game to be a part of… it’s going to be an experience I’ll never forget.” — Maple Leafs defenseman, Dion Phaneuf

It’s a regular season game that counts for the standings, but it’s also a throwback to childhood for many of the players and a ton of fun. Like that NFL game between the Eagles and the Lions a few weeks back, when the players are having fun, their joy actually comes across through the television and augments your viewing experience.

The Winter Classic Isn’t a Classic, But It’s Becoming One

The “classic” in Winter Classic is more aspirational than it is a reflection of reality. The first Winter Classic game was played in 2008, so next to some other elements of the NHL like the 121 year-old Stanley Cup (the NHL Championship trophy,) the game is in its infancy. The NHL has done a wonderful job with it though and I would venture to say it’s on its way to becoming a classic tradition. For starters, there’s the deal the league made with HBO to film a four episode season of their sports documentary series 24/7 about the two teams who will play in the Winter Classic. The show is a great lead-in to the game and has at times created its own miniature stars. There’s also an alumni game the night before the Winter Classic that brings back legendary (or just old) players from both teams who get to skate with each other on the outdoor rink. The 30,000+ fans who watched and the players who participated love the chance to relive the past.

The last clever part of the game is that the NHL reached into the sports schedule in just the right place at the right time. New Year’s Day was traditionally dominated by College Football bowl games. As the college football bowl schedule became more and more crowded (one could say bloated) over the last ten or fifteen years, the schedule started creeping deeper into January. The Rose Bowl and Tostitos Fiesta Bowl are still on New Year’s Day but begin later, at 5 pm and 8 pm ET. The other BCS (most important) bowl games are played on Jan 2, 3, or 6. The NHL cleverly swooped in right as New Year’s Day was starting to open up to other sports programming.

The Winter Classic is a Beautiful Sight

An outdoor hockey game can be stunning to watch. The teams always wear uniforms designed just for the Winter Classic. This is obviously a merchandise selling tactic but they also tend to be bolder in color than the normal jerseys, optimized to look good outside. The organizers of the game pick their locations carefully to create stunning tableaus, and there’s always the chance of falling snow to push the images even farther. Here are some photos from Winter Classics, past and present:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Enjoy the game,
Ezra Fischer

Do Not Watch This Football Game: Jacksonville vs Houston

no-football — Image from http://bit.ly/18mWCRL

On Thursday, December 5, at 8:25 ET, an NFL football game between Jacksonville and Houston will be televised on the NFL network. Do not watch this football game! This is a blog about sports, written by a sports fan for non-sports fans, but today, I’m writing to all the sports fans out there. If you are a regular non-sports fan reader pass this along to the sports fans in your life! Unless they are from Jacksonville or Houston, there’s no reason for them to watch this football game and there are plenty of good reasons not to. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Do not watch this football game because the teams playing are horrible

The Jacksonville Jaguars have three wins and nine losses so far this year. They are last in the league in total points scored per game and third to last in total points allowed. Their average game sees them giving up 29.3 points and scoring only 14.5 points. (Football scoring can be complicated, but even it cannot produce decimals — these are just averages.) They have been blown out of many of the games they’ve played this year. Beyond being bad, they’re also uninteresting. Early in the season, Jaguars fans held a rally to urge their team to sign popular but probably incompetent quarterback Tim Tebow. Even this was ineffective at driving interest in the team. Almost no one showed up. Tebow, despite fake rumors of the contrary from eyeofthetiber.com, remains unsigned.^[1]

If it’s possible, the Houston Texans are an even more depressing team. Their record, two wins and ten losses, is worse than the Jaguars. The Texans are fourth worst in the league in terms of points scored (19.2) and sixth worst in points allowed (26.9). Unlike Jaguars fans, fans of the Texans were not prepared for this type of season. The previous two years, the Texans were 10-6 and 12-4 and won their division both times. There were no real hints that things were going to go so badly this year, but they did. Their starting quarterback caught a bad case of the yips (according to Wikipedia, “the apparent loss of fine motor skills without apparent explanation, in one of a number of different sports”) and threw interceptions that were returned for defensive touchdowns in four straight games before getting injured and subsequently benched. Their star running back, Arian Foster, is out for the rest of the year after back surgery. Their best defensive player, Brian Cushing, is also out for the year with a torn ligament in his knee and a broken leg. To add injury to injury, their head coach suffered a “warning stroke” at halftime of a game.

2. Do not watch this football game because it will be bad for your social life

Here’s the deal. It’s getting late in the season. Your friends, family, and significant others have lived through thirteen weeks of football so far and you KNOW that you’re going to want to watch a bunch more football because now it’s the fantasy football playoffs (more on that later) and the real playoffs will follow shortly after that. Last week was Thanksgiving, so there were not one, not two, but three football games on Thursday and though we argued for the inclusion of football in Thanksgiving celebrations, it’s an accommodation that your non-sports fan friends and family made for you. Don’t push it. Make dinner, go to a movie, play a card game, studiously avoid decorating the festivus pole. Do anything, but do not watch this football game.

3. Do not watch this football game because it doesn’t even have any fantasy implications

I know, I know, it’s not a good game, it’s not an important game, but it’s the fantasy football playoffs! In most fantasy leagues, the playoffs begin this week and normally this would drive people to pay close attention to even the most mundane football game. Seriously though, if you have been counting on a player from one of these teams, it’s unlikely your team has qualified for the fantasy playoffs. There’s really not too many players in this game who should be starting on your fantasy team this week anyway. Sure, wide receiver Andre Johnson and running backs Ben Tate and Maurice Jones-Drew are decent plays most weeks, but it’s a reasonably well-studied fact that players perform worse during Thursday games. I say, don’t count on any of these players, do not watch the game, and thank me later.

4. Do not watch this game because watching it is bad for football and terrible for football players

This is the most interesting and most compelling argument for why you should not watch this game. Playing a game on Thursday night, just four days after the previous Sunday’s game, is absolutely brutal. MMQB.com ran a wonderful article about this by Robert Klemko, which initially inspired this post. In it, Klemko quotes Texans offensive lineman, Duane Brown:

“That Friday, everything was hurting; knees, hands, shoulders,” he remembers. “I didn’t get out of bed until that night. I didn’t leave the house at all. You talk about player safety, but you want to extend the season and add Thursday games? It’s talking out of both sides of your mouth.”

“Knees, hands, shoulders” are one thing but heads are another entirely. We’re still learning about concussions but a few things are reasonably clear. Players will hide concussions from their teams and try to play despite them. The most dangerous thing that can happen to a player who is concussed is to get concussed again and this is more likely the less rest they have after their first concussions. Playing games with less than six days of rest is painful and dangerous.

If we give the NFL the benefit of the doubt (which I’m not positive we should) about being sincerely concerned for player safety, how can we rationalize their expansion of the NFL schedule to include more and more Thursday games? Klemko writes that the value of those games to the league is enormous — estimated at over $700 million dollars per year on top of making the NFL network (which televises most of the Thursday night games) a viable network. And it’s our viewing, particularly of bad match-ups like this one, that drives that value. Klemko writes:

Putting aside for a moment the injury concerns, who would actually want to watch these 14 games featuring fatigued players, often pitting bad teams against good ones, or worse, the 2-10 Texans vs. the 3-9 Jaguars (8:25 PM ET, Thursday, NFL Network)?

Answer: EVERYBODY.

“You have Houston and Jacksonville, which no one is looking forward to,” Ourand says, “but even that game is going to win the night on cable within the male demographics everybody sells, and it will be one of the top 5 or 10 shows on TV. The power of the NFL and why they want to go to Thursday is more evident in this game than in any other.”

So far at least, that seems to be true. Fans, including myself, have watched the Thursday games faithfully. I can’t say I’m completely happy about it though. I think it seriously dilutes the NFL experience. There’s something special about isolating all of the games on Sunday (and Monday night.) It makes every Sunday an anticipated event; a miniature holiday of the football denomination. I am particularly frustrated about the Thursday game’s impact on my enjoyment of fantasy football. Part of the fun of fantasy football is approaching a Sunday full of football knowing that, like in each game that day, you start 0-0 and anything could happen. The Thursday game almost always means that instead of that “anything could happen” feeling, you have a “oh, I’m ahead, I should win this” feeling or a “oh man, I’m definitely not going to win” feeling. It’s a lot less fun that way.

For this Thursday, at least, let’s do our part for the players, for our relationships, for our sanity, and not watch the football game.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Thanks Dad for passing me this delightful article↵

Why You Shouldn't Spend All Day Watching Football

One of the joys of working on this website is that the WordPress software I run the site with tracks many of the search terms people have entered that lead them to Dear Sports Fan. Yesterday someone viewed the site after searching google for “why men shouldn’t watch NFL football every Sunday.” This is pretty exciting because it means that our core audience (non-sports fans who have important sports fans in their lives) exist and that they are curious or frustrated enough to take their questions to the internet and that once there, Dear Sports Fan’s content is relevant enough to pop up in searches and to be read! So, in honor of you, whoever you are, here are some thoughts about spending all day watching football and some tips on negotiating the topic with your favorite football fan.

Less is More

There’s different modes of football watching and one that is extremely enjoyable is the viewing of a single, important game. Watching football all day sometimes means you never really focus in on one game and enjoy it’s drama, it’s plot twists, it’s ups and downs as fully as you could. If the fan in your life has a favorite team, why not make it into a special occasion for him or her? Expressing the desire to watch with that person is likely enough to make it special but it wouldn’t hurt to add some props to the equation. Throw on some color coded clothing to support a team. Clear away distractions half an hour early. Get involved by cooking or ordering appropriate food. Football team names are often fun to play with in a themed event kind of way. When I was in college, my friends and I would throw a themed super bowl party. When the Buccaneers played the Raiders it was PIRATE BOWL. There’s no reason why you can’t steal this idea on a normal Sunday. Cook some gumbo for a Saints game, make some wings for a Bills game, or cook a corned beef (but start early) for a Patriots game. Making an occasion out of a game is a good way to make a single game the occasion.

Take a Bye Week

If the sports fan in your life has a favorite team there is at least one, probably two or three weeks during the football season where the negotiation for a football free or football light weekend will be significantly easier than others. In the NFL, every team plays 16 games over 17 weeks. The one week a team does not play is called their bye week. This is a great week to suggest that your favorite fan take a bye week too! Go away for the weekend or get some yard work done! Every team also has at least one prime-time game on Thursday, Sunday, or Monday night. These weeks are also good bets to suggest a Sunday day activity.

Plan Ahead

One of the under-appreciated elements of the sports business is how effectively is markets itself. Most of the time sporting events are generally unremarkable. Once in a while they’re drama and unpredictability make them transendent experiences for sports fans. ESPN, NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, and the sports leagues themselves do a great job of promoting upcoming games to convince sports fans that despite all probabalistic evidence to the contrary, this game is going to defy logic and has a 100% chance of being transendent. Think of the way big food companies market desserts and then double it. By the day of the game most sports fans have been looking forward to watching particular games for days. If you want to do something else with them, talk to them about it before they’ve bought the hype.

Lose the Battle, Win the War

Sometimes, it is great to watch football all day. As bizarre as it may sound if you are not a fan, planting your butt on a couch and watching football all day is an experience many of us prize. It’s an indulgence like spending the day at a spa or an amusement park or in a casino. And like all indulgences, it’s only really enjoyable if you feel good about doing it! So give the football fan in your life the gift of support some Sundays and make them feel good about indulging themselves. Tell them you understand how they enjoy a full day of football and that you want them to choose some Sundays to have that and some Sundays to share the day with you. I’ll leave it to you and your sports fan to figure out exactly what the right ratio is.

Good luck and happy negotiating.

NFL Pregame Excess

As a sports fan, I am also a big fan of Sundays during the fall. I like nothing more than to have already had a weekend full of social events so that I can sit down on the coach and feel totally wonderful about watching football all day. As a fantasy football owner, I’ve also been known to have my laptop (and my phone, and my ipad, and whatever other screens I can find) propped open so that I can simultaneously follow my fantasy football team and as many of the non-televised games as possible. I’ve tried the NFL Red Zone channel a few times. Red Zone is a term which refers to an offensive team having the ball within 20 yards of the end-zone they are trying to score in. The Red Zone channel flips back and forth between games to show the most exciting parts of all of them — it will even split your screen into three or four games at times. I find it to be a dangerously hyperactive experience that leaves me feeling sort of shaky and not like I’ve enjoyed watching sports at all. But I understand the appeal of the Red Zone channel.

What I don’t understand is the appeal of NFL pre-game shows, so I was really happy to read the recent New York Times survey of them by Richard Sandomir. In it he describes the growth of the Sunday morning NFL shows as an inevitable but ridiculous consequence of the NFL’s popularity^[1]

Starting Sunday, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. (all times Eastern), there will be 19 hours of pregame N.F.L.programming. Four of the new hours arrive courtesy of the CBS Sports Network, which is producing “That Other Pregame Show” next to the studio in Manhattan that is used by “The NFL Today,” the CBS broadcast network’s venerable pregame show. This flagrant addition of four hours, in one stroke, is excess piling on extravagance.

Keith Jackson, a retired legend of football broadcasting, was profiled recently in the LA Times by Chris Erskine. Erskine asked Jackson if he had any wisdom to impart on today’s broadcasters and Jackson replied, “They talk too damn much. You wear the audience out.” It’s likely Jackson was thinking about commentators during the game when he said that but I’d like to think he would feel the same about pre-game shows.

If there is one nice thing about all the NFL coverage and promotion, it’s that each channel has it’s own NFL theme song. These constants have become like Pavlovian conditional reflexes to me. They make me sprawl out, relax, maybe freak out a little about fantasy football, but mostly get ready to indulge myself in a day of sports. If you’re conditioned like I am, you might enjoy this inventive YouTube video by Ansel Wallenfang which I found on deadspin.com.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

And the low-cost of studio shows compared to other types of programming.↵

Why is Soccer a Summer Sport in the United States?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why is soccer a summer sports in the United States, but an autumn/winter sport in most of the rest of the soccer-playing world (i.e., the rest of the world)? I’ve long associated soccer with drizzle and mud and it’s bizarre to see it played in the hot sun on a dry pitch. There’s no overlap with players as far as I know–the big stars play in Europe exclusively.

Thanks,
Guy

Dear Guy

When I was a kid, I played on a “traveling” soccer team and I seem to remember that soccer season was fall and spring… although we also played indoor soccer in the winter… and went to soccer camps in the Summer. So I guess I do remember growing up playing soccer year round although when it comes to scholastic sports in America, soccer is a fall sport ending in early winter.

The most popular soccer league in the world, the English Premier League runs from August to May so you’re right, that’s mostly Fall/Winter with a little bit of Summer and Spring peeking out the sides. Major League Soccer (MLS is America’s attempt at professional soccer,) which is not as popular as other soccer leagues around the world – does have a summer-heavy schedule (March to December,) though the playoffs extend well into the fall and winter.

The reason for that is simple: competition. Not athletic competition, mind you – but TV competition. The summer is traditionally a TV sports dead zone, when baseball is in full swing but only truly captivating to a subset of the population, basketball and hockey are ending and, every two years, the Olympics may capture the nation’s attention for a couple of weeks, depending on the charisma of that year’s girl’s gymnastics team. Most importantly, American football – the dominant sports TV franchise in America, even though soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) is the most popular sport in the world – is completely off the air.

So it makes sense that, in trying to make professional soccer a competitive economic enterprise in America – where TV viewership is the key – the powers that be focused on that dead zone and scheduled the bulk of the season for the summer.

Hope this answers your question – certainly I think it’s a more responsive answer than my gut reaction, which was to say that you associate soccer with cold and rainy weather because you’re used to watching soccer in England where – to indulge an ignorant American stereotype – everything from warm beer to Marmite is associated with cold and rainy weather.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

Do Sports Fans Use Sports as a Reward?

Dear Sports Fan,

Do sports fans use watching sports as a reward for doing work? If not how do they ever get anything done?

Confused,
Bette

Dear Bette,

That’s a loaded question isn’t it? I don’t use watching sports as a reward for doing work but I’m not big on consciously rewarding myself for behavior. Also I don’t often bring work home with me. I’m sure some people use watching sports as a reward for cleaning a room, working out, or getting some work task done just the same way people use a hershey kiss or a half hour with a magazine or tv show. It’s probably a bit harder to do though because watching sports is one of the few television events that you still want to watch live. So it’s not like you can just watch the sporting event whenever you want once you’re done with a task. Instead, I think most sports fans plan their life around events that they really want to see. Certainly a swath of our culture plans itself around doing not much but watching football every Sunday during the fall. The Super Bowl (or the day after) should be a national holiday. I try to not take on too many after-work commitments during the spring because I know I will want to come home and watch the NBA and NHL playoffs on most days.

There are three other answers to your question some of which contradict each other:

We don’t get much done. Being a sports fan requires a lot of time and therefore is really only sustainable if you don’t have a lot to get done. Of course sports fans are sometimes productive members of society but they do seem to find ways to contribute that don’t take all day…
We can get stuff done while watching sports. As discussed in a previous post answering the question of why sports fans seem to pick even sports they don’t like over any other entertainment, watching sports doesn’t take your whole attention like watching other television does. Sports fans can usually grade papers, write memos, or (ahem) write blog posts while watching sports.
We don’t do anything else. You may think we spend a lot of time watching sports and you’d be right. But you don’t know that we don’t window shop online, garden, read, listen to the radio, clean our houses, cook, bathe regularly, or talk to our families. If the games are really good that day we might stop moving, blinking, eating, or breathing just to be sure we don’t miss anything.

Jokes aside, there is a lot of time floating around out there and I bet if you looked closely you’d be able to add up the time that you use for a few avocations and equal the amount a sports fan spends on sports.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Why Will Sports Fans Watch Any and All Sports?

Dear Sports Fan,

I feel like personal preference exists in all forms of entertainment. How is it that sports fans will choose any sport over anything else, even when the other option is something they like and the sport is one they don’t?

Confused and a little frustrated,
Sarah

Dear Sarah,

What a great question! This is a great point about sports fans. Many of us watch an enormous array of sports often at the expense of other forms of entertainment. It is apropos for me to try to answer this on the Fourth of July, a day when each and every year I find myself horrified and fascinated but glued to the television for the annual hot dog eating contest on Coney Island. Why do I do this? It’s really, really gross but I suppose I watch it for many of the reasons I watch other sporting events:

Competition — No matter how good an episode of 30 Rock at the end there is no winner and no loser. Err… I guess usually Jack Donaghy wins and Liz Lemon loses, but you know what I mean. The natural tension of sports does come from competition. Even when I don’t really care which team wins, it’s clear that the competitors care and that passion is contagious.
Habit/Cross-Promotion — Okay, you got us, a lot of the time a sports fan will be watching sports out of sheer habitual inertia. You get used to getting home and turning ESPN on. When the best thing that’s on is a college lacrosse… so what, it’s still something to watch. There is a limit though, and every fan has a different line. For me it’s usually somewhere around golf or baseball; for others it may be soccer or women’s basketball. ESPN and other sports channels have an interest in pushing that line back so that it includes as many of its programming hours as possible. To that end they have gotten really, really good at promotion. Their pitch is usually effective and it centers around the next of our reasons…
Potential for Memorableness — In the long-run, one of the payoffs for being a faithful watcher of sports is that you will be watching when some really crazy things happen. Most people turned the Monday Night Football game off on October 23, 2000 when after 3 quarters the Miami Dolphins were up 30 to 7. But, like you noticed — some sports fans favor even the most seemingly meaningless, settled sports game over other forms of entertainment. I kept watching the game. Sure enough, the Jets came back in the fourth quarter and ended up winning the game 40 to 37! It’s games like this that contribute to us leaving the game on the tv no matter what.
Strategy — Most sports, especially team sports, share certain elements of strategy that are immediately recognizable. If you are a big soccer fan then watching a basketball game will be familiar because of the fluid passing of a good point guard. A hockey fan may not love that football keeps stopping all the time, but a good solid hit is a universal. Even more unusual sports, like water polo or cycling often have recognizable strategies if you are a fan of other sports; and part of the fun is the translation.
We’re not REALLY watching — Watching sports, unless it’s a particularly important game (defined as involving your favorite team OR in the playoffs) doesn’t require as much attention as other forms of entertainment. I can read the newspaper, write a blog entry, clean my apartment, organize my life (ha ha) while I watch a basketball game but if I’m watching an episode of The Sopranos or Boston Legal or even Chopped, I feel like I have to be more fully attentive.

I hope I’ve been able to answer your question. I’m off to watch the hot dog eating contest although I will probably switch back and forth to Versus’ coverage of the Tour de France. Later on there’s some international Under-17 Year-old soccer.

Happy Fourth of July!
Ezra Fischer

The Women's World Cup is Happening? Huh?

Dear Sports Fan,

I had no idea the Women’s World Cup was upon us. Give me the breakdown – who are the top teams? Where is the Cup being held? Are there any channels showing it in the US?

Thanks,
Penalty Kick

Dear Penalty Kick,

The Women’s World Cup is indeed upon us. This quadrennial^[1] competition pits the best 16 women’s national soccer teams against each other over three weeks. It began on June 26 and will conclude on July 17. It is being held in Germany with games in nine arenas throughout the country.

The women’s tournament has a lot in common with the men’s. To start with, just qualifying for the tournament is a great achievement for many countries. The qualification games have been going on since April 2009! The tournament is divided into two stages. In the first stage or group stage, the 16 qualifying teams get split up into four groups of four. Each team plays every other team in the group. A win is worth three points, a tie worth one, and a loss none. At the end of the group stage each team will have played three games. The two teams in each group with the most points will move on to the next stage. As you can imagine, with only eight possible point totals^[2] it is pretty usual to have some teams tied at the end of the group stage. Luckily there is a Byzantine system to settle these situations! There is a hierarchy of eight tie-breaking factors that end with “Drawing of lots by the FIFA Organizing Committee!” The second stage is a pretty straight-forward single elimination tournament between the surviving eight teams.

The host team Germany has won the last two World Cups and they are again the favorites. If they stumble under the pressure, the next most likely teams to take advantage are the Brazilians, the Americans, the Japanese, and the Swedes — believe it or not, people bet on these games! People watch them too! Every game will be televised on ESPN or some ESPN channel.

I love watching women’s soccer because… well, I love watching any soccer! The issue of why women’s sports are not more popular as spectator sports in our country is a bigger one than you asked me to bite into, but it does seem like soccer translates from men to women better than almost any sport. The rules are exactly the same — the ball the same size, the field the same size, etc. The competition is as fierce and unlike men’s soccer, our women actually have a good shot to win! Also there is WAY less diving! The U.S. team played its first game today and won 2-0 over a North Korean team whose coach blamed lightning for his loss in his post-game press conference. Lighting!! The remaining two games in the group stage for the U.S. are Saturday at noon against Colombia and Wednesday July 7 at 2:35 against Sweden. Give them a watch!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Fancy talk for every four years.↵
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9 although I would guess that there few possible combinations for the four team group than you would think, because each team’s results effect the other teams’ results within the group. Anyone feel like solving this math problem?↵