Cue Cards 9-19-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

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Yesterday —  Thursday, September 18

  1. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team rolls — Our women’s soccer team is to international soccer what our men’s national basketball team is to basketball. Dominant. Perhaps they aren’t quite as overwhelmingly dominant as the men’s basketball team but you wouldn’t know that from the easy 4-0 victory over Mexico last night. This followed an 8-0 win over the same team in their previous game. According to Liviu Bird of Sports Illustrated, these two games against Mexico are actually likely to be more challenging than any teams the team will face in official qualifying games for the 2015 World Cup.
    Line: If only we could develop male soccer players in this country as well as we do women, we’d have been able to give goalie Tim Howard some support in the men’s World Cup in Brazil.
  2. The Atlanta Falcons swoop the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — Last night’s NFL game was compelling like a fender bender is. The Falcons scored the first 56 points of the game. 56!! The Bucs? Well, they fumbled and bumbled and slipped and fell. It was ugly.
    Line: I know they’re professionals and all but how can you not feel sympathy for a group of guys who just had their absolute worst day on the job watched by millions of people?
  3. Auburn survives Kansas State — There was a rare high-profile college football game on Thursday last night. The Auburn Tigers have national championship aspirations and the way college football is set up, teams basically can’t lose more than one game all season if they want a chance at the championship. It’s far better to be undefeated. The Kansas State Wildcats showed a lot of talent and heart by putting a real scare into the Tigers late in the game.
    Line: The good thing about college football is that the regular season is so important, the games feel like playoff games.

Cue Cards 9-15-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboardYesterday —  Sunday, September 14

  1. The NFL plays football — After a week full of ancillary cultural stories, the NFL actually played football games yesterday. Read the Week Two NFL One Liners for full (and brief) coverage of each game.
  2. Well, that was easy — The United States Men’s National Basketball team finished their romp through the FIBA World Cup of Basketball with a 129-92 victory. Looking back on the tournament, the toughest game the team had, was against Turkey in the group stage. It may have been different if Spain had made it to the finals, because they were expected to be around even with our team, but they were knocked out of the tournament in the quarterfinals by France.

Cue Cards 9-12-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboardYesterday —  Thursday, September 11

  1. Goliath beats David easily — After France’s upset of Spain in their FIBA Basketball World Cup quarterfinal game, it was easy to feel like upset was in the air, and to get a little nervous about the United States’ game against Lithuania. Not to worry though, after a slow start, the United States outscored their opponent 53 to 24 in the second half. The U.S. team moves on to the finals in Madrid where they will face the winner of France vs. Serbia.
    Line: It’s starting to look like the U.S. team, even missing some of our biggest stars like LeBron, Kevin Durant, and Paul George, is simply in a different class from its opponents.
  2. It’s us against the world = victory — One of the incongruities of how people within the NFL talk about football is the subject of “distractions”. “Distractions” like from having an openly gay player on your team are seen to be a legitimate cause of concern as something that could derail the performance of the team. But, predictably, when there are real distractions, like when your team is embroiled in a domestic abuse scandal and potential cover up, that “distraction” gets used as a rally cry within the team’s locker room and seems to almost always lead to a victory. So it was last night when Ray Rice’s old team, the Baltimore Ravens played their division rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Ravens won, 26 to 6.
    Line: I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at the Ravens performance. Doesn’t it seem like teams in the middle of scandals always play well and usually win?

Cue Cards 9-11-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboardYesterday —  Wednesday, September 10

  1. Spain upset by France — It sounds like the plot of a children’s book about regional food but it really happened yesterday in the FIBA Basketball World Cup. The host country, and co-favorite to win the entire tournament, Spain, was defeated 65-52 by France. This is a real shock, in part because France lost by 24 points to Spain earlier in the tournament. What to make of it? Well, for one, it means that the United States matchup against Spain in the championship game that was expected, won’t happen. Spain is eliminated. It’s a good reminder though, that if the gap between the rest of the world and the United States in terms of basketball wherewithal (that should be the name of a blog) is closing, then so too is the gap between the rest of the world and itself.
    Line: I can’t believe Spain lost on their home court. And to neighboring France to boot! They must be so sad in Spain today.
  2. Decade-long underdogs holding on — People often use the phrase “national pastime” to refer to baseball, but it must be said, given how little room on sports pages baseball is receiving, even as its regular season charges into tight playoff races, that it’s no longer our national sport. That said, the most compelling part of baseball season is upon us and a couple of long-suffering, long-pretty-bad franchises are desperately trying to hold onto playoff spots. Both won important games last night. The Pittsburgh Pirates beat in-state rival, Philadelphia Phillies, 6-3 and the Kansas City Royals shut out the Detroit Tigers 3-0. If the season ended now, both the Pirates and the Royals would make the playoffs.
    Line: Baseball might not be the national pastime anymore but rooting for the underdog still is! Go Pirates and Royals!
  3. The NFL’s Watergate Week continues — An AP story broke yesterday with the news that the NFL received a copy of the video from inside the elevator where Ray Rice assaulted his fiancee months ago. This only confirms my opinion that the question we should be asking NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is “what did he know and when did he know it.” Given yesterday’s news, it sounds more likely than ever that Goodell’s job is in jeopardy over this.
    Line: Wow. Goodell’s got to resign or be fired.

Cue Cards 9-8-2014

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Yesterday —  Sunday, September 7

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

The FIBA Basketball World Cup heats up today

Expect a great atmosphere when Spain plays France
Expect a great atmosphere when Spain plays France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Or at least the men on the barstools

Cue Cards 9-2-14

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Over the Weekend —  August 29 to September 1

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

How Does the Basketball World Cup Work?

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

Tournament Structure

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

Differences in NBA vs. FIBA Rules

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

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

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

So why is this worth watching?

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

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

I’m convinced. How do I watch?

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

How to Watch the World Cup Championship Game

A month and a day after the World Cup began, we’re down to two teams, Germany and Argentina. It’s been the most exciting World Cup I can remember and I hope they produce a championship game today worthy of the tournament. I put together a few notes about the game for those of you who have been following the tournament and for people who are planning to tune in today for the first time.

If you’ve been following the tournament:

The game starts at 3:00 pm on ABC. WARNING WARNING WARNING — this is an hour earlier than the games have been starting. Adjust your routine accordingly lest you miss the first half. Why they changed the time, I have no idea, but it’s probably JUST TO TRICK US.

Messi
It takes a nation of millions to hold Messi back. Greece couldn’t do it, can Germany?

The game is being billed as “the best team against the best player” with Germany being the team and Argentina’s Messi being the best player. This is a clever analysis because it manages to insult literally every player on both teams except Lionel Messi. “Hi, German player,” it says, “you are not as good as Messi.” “Hi, Argentinian player,” it says, “you are an afterthought being supported solely by Messi’s brilliance.” Another way of expressing this would be to say that both teams are great, but that if you were to rank the individual players by skill, Messi would be the clear first on the list. After him would be five or six Germans before you finally saw another Argentinian. Soccer is one of the most collective games, so I won’t be surprised if the team with more better players beats the team with the best player.

Am I the only one who always feels a little let down before a championship game? Maybe it’s because the teams I have been rooting for (the United States and the Netherlands) are eliminated. Or maybe it’s because the World Cup, which I love so much, will be over in just a few hours. Or maybe it’s just because by the time you get to a final game there are only two potential winners which is so much less fun than four, eight, sixteen, or thirty two potential winners.

If you’re just tuning in now:

Today’s game is the sixty fourth and last game in the World Cup. The World Cup starts with thirty two teams who play a round robin in groups of four to determine who makes it through to the knockout round of sixteen teams. Those sixteen teams play a single elimination tournament, like March Madness but smaller and arguably more mad, until only two remain. Those two teams, Argentina and Germany, will play today to determine a World Cup Champion that gets to rein over the soccer playing world for the next four years. In 2010, almost a billion people watched the Championship game which dwarfs the 111 million who watched the Super Bowl this year.

You may be wondering why people like soccer. The reasons vary, of course, but I think it’s because it is really hard to score, and because of that you often get a tremendous buildup of tension as a viewer before an enormous eruption of joy when your team does score, and because it has the most teamwork and free-flowing movement of any game.

That’s all very good, but why is soccer so liberal and why do the players dive so much? The connection between liberal politics and soccer is mostly confined to the United States. In other countries, like Argentina and Germany, for instance, soccer spans the full political spectrum. In many countries, soccer is a political forum, but various professional teams will often be lodestones for different political parties. As for the diving, there are two main factors that play into it. First, there’s only one ref on the field to watch 22 players. Compared to three refs for 10 players in NBA basketball or seven for 22 in NFL football, the soccer ref has a nearly impossible task. Because it’s so much harder for a ref to see everything, players are more likely to be able to trick them by pretending to be fouled. Fouls also play a bigger role in the outcome of a soccer game than most other sports because soccer is so low scoring. If you can win a penalty kick by pretending to be fouled in the penalty box, or convince the ref to give an opposing player a red card, that may very well be the difference between winning and losing. Diving in soccer is more effective and more important than in other sports.

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Whether you’re a die-hard soccer fan, someone who has been casually enjoying the month-long World Cup, or someone who is planning on watching the game today just to feel united with 1/7th of the world’s population, I hope you enjoy the game!

Top Three Reasons Why You Should Watch the World Cup Third Place Game

Maybe the title of this blog post should really be “three reasons why the sports fan in your life wants to watch the World Cup third place game that might be good enough to convince you to watch it too.” It’s admittedly a thin line I walk, as a sports fan writing about sports for people who are more curious about the sports world than obsessed by it and who like to know enough to be conversant in sports but perhaps don’t really want every conversation they have to be focused on sports. I do, however, have some record of telling it how it is when I absolutely do not think a game is worth watching, and I happen to actually think the World Cup third place game between the Netherlands and Brazil on July 12, 4 pm, on ESPN is well worth the time. Here are some reasons why:

FBL-WC-2014-MATCH61-BRA-GER1. Third place games are usually great.

I will not go as far as to argue that the third place game is “often the best game” as the New Yorker does, but I will say that it’s often one of the most enjoyable games.

One of the unavoidable truths about soccer which influences almost every facet of the game is that every offensive move a team makes leaves it more vulnerable defensively than if it had not attacked. This is one of the reasons why soccer is so low scoring. A team that commits itself thoroughly to not being scored on, like the Netherlands did in their semifinal against Argentina by keeping as many players between Messi and their own goal as possible, can make it nearly impossible for the other team to score. In the third place game, there’s less reason for anyone to care that much about whether or not their team gets scored on. It’s for this reason that the third place game can be very high scoring. Since 1990 the World Cup championship game has averaged only 1.5 goals scored but the third place game has averaged 4 goals.

As long as a team you root for has a chance to win the World Cup, most fans are happy to make the trade-off of watching defensive soccer for the excitement of imagining that your team will actually win the World Cup. Once that possibility is gone however, it’s nice to watch soccer for its essential beauty — great athletes doing things with a ball and their feet, head, or chest, that given a million years you would not be able to replicate.

2. Brazil is like a roller coaster baby, I want to watch.

There have probably already been millions of words written in reaction to Brazil’s 7-1 loss to Germany in the semi-finals. My favorite article about it is from Grantland’s Brian Phillips. Here are just a couple of choice bits:

This wasn’t a match like other matches, wasn’t a loss like other losses… You could feel it wherever you were. It was the sense — obviously irrational, tautologically irrational, but still strong — that we were outside the realm of things that can occur.

Comparing it to an NFL game doesn’t work, for instance, because no NFL team is fanatically supported by a nation of more than 200 million people… And then, I’m sorry, but the scene in that stadium after the match, the intensity of the weeping — and not just the crowd’s, the players’ — did not, in deep and basic ways, resemble a big home playoff loss at Sports Authority Field. You knew as you were watching that Brazilian soccer’s idea of itself would never be quite the same, that the lives of these players would never be the same.

Knowing that Phillips is potentially underplaying the impact of that game on Brazilian players, coaches, and fans, how can you not be interested to see how they look and act and play a mere four days later, playing in the consolation game of a World Cup that they wanted to win so badly?

3. Swan song or cygnet chirp

First of all, baby swans are called cygnets. I have no idea how this is possible, but the internet tells me so. There’s always a little sadness in sport because players have such short careers. Soccer players are a little long in the tooth by 30 and well past their prime by 32. By 35 they are unlikely to be playing at the highest level anymore. (In fact, they are more likely to be playing in the U.S. professional league, the MLS, but that’s another story.) Events like the World Cup and the Olympics only heighten this bittersweetness because they only happen once every four years. I certainly felt a little sad thinking that their wonderful effort against Belgium might be the last time we see Clint Dempsey, DaMarcus Beasley, and Tim Howard play at a World Cup. For Dutch fans, the trio that they are feeling sad about is a trio of great players, Robin Van Persie, Arjen Robben, and Wesley Sneijder. This trio has lead the Orange attack for the last decade but seem sure never to win a World Cup. The closest they got four years ago when they lost in the championship game to Spain.

On the other side of things, time and age are also one of the reasons why hope springs eternal in sports. Again, because winning the third place game is not so important and because some of the more outspoken veteran players have openly groused about the existence of the game, we may see younger players in this game whose talent has been just raw enough to keep them on the bench for the tournament so far. You never know who might explode onto the scene.

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To celebrate the World Cup in Brazil, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a set of posts explaining elements of soccer. We hope you enjoy posts like Why do People Like Soccer? How Does the World Cup WorkWhy Do Soccer Players Dive so MuchWhat is a Penalty Kick in Soccer? What are Red and Yellow Cards in Soccer?Why do World Cup Soccer Players Blame the Ball? and Reflections on the 2014 World Cup for the United States.  The 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins on June 12 and ends on July 13.