It's that time of year again! Yes, I know, I'm beating a dead horse here. And yes, I understand there's no convincing baseball fans of...well...anything involving changes to their sacred sport. Still, when I first made the argument two years ago that money clearly matters, I've tried to make it a point to pay attention going forward. But let's back track a little.
Here are the list of the past 22 World Series winners, and their respective payroll ranking.
2013 - Boston Red Sox: $159 million (4th highest)
2012 - San Francisco Giants: $138 million (6th highest)
2011 - St. Louis Cardinals: $105 million (11th highest)
2010 - San Francisco Giants: $97 million (10th highest)
2009 - New York Yankees: $201 million (1st)
2008 - Philadelphia Phillies: $98 million (13th)
2007 - Boston Red Sox: $143 million (2nd)
2006 - St. Louis Cardinals: $88 million (11th)
2005 - Chicago White Sox: $73 million (13th)
2004 - Boston Red Sox: $125 million (2nd)
2003 - Florida Marlins: $63 million (20th)
2002 - Anaheim Angels: $61 million (15th)
2001 - Arizona Diamondbacks: $81 million (8th)
2000 - New York Yankees: $92 million (1st)
1999 - New York Yankees: $89 million (1st)
1998 - New York Yankees: $64 million (2nd)
1997 - Florida Marlins: $48 million (7th)
1996 - New York Yankees: $53 million (1st)
1995 - Atlanta Braves: $46 million (3rd)
1993 - Toronto Blue Jays: $43 million (1st)
1992 - Toronto Blue Jays: $44 million (1st)
1991 - Minnesota Twins: $23 million (13th)
You would note that teams in the top 10 highest payrolls (or financially, the top 33%) account for 14 World Series victories. That's 63.3% (or nearly two-thirds of the past 22 World Series titles). Making it worse is, teams in the top half of payrolls account for, quite literally, all but one of those 22 titles. Teams in the top 50% of payrolls account for 95.4% of World Series titles. Having the top payroll in baseball has "earned" a title 6 times (which means a little over a quarter of the last 22 titles, 27% total). And only the 2003 Florida Marlins fell into the bottom half. You might also notice that never in the past 22 years has a team falling in the BOTTOM third of payrolls won.
Well, ok. You need to make the playoffs to win the World Series, right? So let's see the "genetic" makeup of playoffs this year and the previous four years before (and let's keep in mind MLB's expansion to include two extra teams a year in the stupid wild card round - for real, just play a best of three series, guys!)
2014:
AL: Oakland, Kansas City, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles Angels
NL: San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Nationals
5 of 10 in top third. 3 of 10 in middle third. 2 of 10 in bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.
2013:
AL: Cleveland, Tampa, Boston, Detroit, Oakland
NL: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta
4 of 10 in the top third. 3 of 10 in the middle third. 3 of 10 in bottom third. 5 of 10 in top half.
2012:
AL: Texas, Baltimore, New York Yankees, Oakland, Detroit
NL: Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, Cincinnati, San Francisco
6 of 10 in the top third. 4 of 10 in the middle third. 0 of 10 in the bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.
2011:
AL: New York Yankees, Detroit, Texas, Tampa
NL: Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Arizona
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in the middle third. 2 of 8 in the bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.
2010:
AL: Tampa, Texas, Minnesota, New York Yankees
NL: Philadelphia, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Atlanta
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in middle third. 2 of 8 in bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.
Here's the total break down:
BREAKDOWN PAST FIVE YEARS: (out of 46 slots)
Teams in Top Third Highest Payroll: 21 (45.6%)
Teams in Middle Third Payroll: 16 (34.7%)
Teams in Top Half Highest Payroll: 29 (63%)
Teams in Bottom Third Payroll: 9 (19.5%)
World Series Winners in the Past Five Years:
4 out of 5 were in the top ten (or top third) highest payrolls in MLB.
A lot of baseball fans still make the counterargument that money doesn't buy championships; that I am making a big deal over nothing. Money in baseball is a non-issue. It doesn't mean squat.
To be clear though (and I get why baseball fans in particular have a hard time with it), but the argument has never been that money buys championships. The argument is that money clearly makes a difference. It gives teams with more money, or that have the capacity to spend more money, a better statistical chance of advancing to the playoffs. And it clearly makes it more likely to advance to and win the World Series. I don't honestly know how anyone can look at the fact that in the past 22 years, only ONCE has a team in the lowest third of payrolls won a championship, then tell me it's a non-issue.
I haven't followed baseball at all this year, but the Dodgers, Angels, Tigers, Giants, and Nationals all fall into the top ten highest payrolls in baseball this year. I am going to go out on a limb and guarantee that one of those teams wins the World Series. And I reiterate: I know next to nothing about the sport of baseball or who is actually good!
Friday, October 3, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
The NFL's Image Problem.
It's been increasingly difficult to avoid discussing the string of recent incidents contributing to the NFL's image problem. No big secret, it's been a rough start to the new season. With there already being four high-profile domestic violence cases (with former Ravens' running back Ray Rice being the only one to really suffer consequences), and one extremely troubling case of what amounts to child abuse, really, from one of the league's premier players who also happens to be the face of a franchise.
To be somewhat fair, the Rice situation is a bit different from the Greg Hardy (Panthers) situation and the Ray McDonald (49ers) situation.. When news broke out way back in February that Rice had punched his fiancee in the face so hard that she was knocked unconscious, it was already an abhorrent scenario. Yet both the Ravens organization and the NFL were reluctant to do anything. As more was revealed about the case, commissioner Roger Goodell slapped him with a measly two game suspension. This, of course, sparked the joke that in the NFL, hitting a joint was worse than hitting your fiancee (as this situation was happening at the same time as Browns' receiver Josh Gordon was facing a year-long suspension for drug abuse after having been found out to have smoke marijuana for the third time in his career).
Already though, this is a league where smoking pot three times is worse than knocking your fiancee out cold. The priorities of the league already appear messed up. There was great public outcry at the weak suspension to begin with, but things only got worse when the video tape of the incident was released. If you haven't seen it, you should look it up. Apart from the fact that Rice just straight up cold-cocks his fiancee; he also seems extremely cavalier about her unconscious body. I don't want to comment on whether this sort of thing has happened before between them, or what. I don't know. Most people reporting on the matter don't. Still, perhaps the most disturbing part of the video is that he just goes on trying to drag her unconscious body out of the elevator like it were an annoying inconvenience.
That's when the shit storm got really intense. The Ravens cut Rice. Taking a page from the Patriots in the Hernandez fiasco, the Ravens even offered a jersey exchange for fans (although I'm curious how many exchanged their Ray Rice jerseys for Terrell Suggs jerseys - another Ravens player to have a couple counts of domestic violence under his belt). The league suspended Rice indefinitely (but as always, left a door open for his possible return). Both the NFL and Ravens organization created an excuse for having not been more serious with this: both claimed they hadn't seen the video.
Well, apart from the fact that later, there are reports that that isn't actually true and that law enforcement officials had actually sent the tape to the NFL so odds are, someone in the league offices saw it, the fact remains that the video tape ultimately changed nothing. The facts we already knew were merely confirmed, but nothing changed. We already knew that Rice punched his fiancee. We already knew that he knocked her out. And we already knew that he tried to drag her out of the elevator before running into other people. These were the facts we already knew. What did the video change? We had known this exact situation had transpired months earlier. Yet now they're trying to cover their asses.
Fact is, the NFL never took this situation seriously.
But now the NFL realizes that maybe this does matter a bit. The sad fact is, the only reason the Panthers deactivated Greg Hardy and the only reason the Vikings deactivated Adrian Peterson was because of the Ray Rice fallout. It's quite simple. No video, no problem. Shit. The 49ers didn't even bother to deactivate Ray McDonald for their prime time implosion. But already, Peterson is confirmed for the next game. McDonald never faced deactivation to begin with. And as much as I want to believe that my NFC team - the Panthers - will do the right thing, it's hard to imagine Hardy sitting out too much longer. And let's also not ignore that Peterson and Hardy were not actually suspended. They were merely deactivated. That is such a huge fundamental difference.
The league has spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to draw in a female fanbase, and it's been more successful than pretty much every major sports league in the country. Yet they've done very little to show that they actually take domestic violence seriously.
The Peterson story isn't much better. Instead of punching his wife, he merely beat up his children with a stick, causing some pretty bad injuries. He's been indicted with negligence and reckless endangerment, but it's a text book case of child abuse. The saddest part of both stories is that all of these players have their supporters and defenders. I try not to give the internet credence, but there are people who honestly believe Rice acted in self-defense! (For the record, that's extremely fucked up.) Peterson has an even greater defense: it's his right to discipline his children how he sees fit. After all, Peterson himself had received similar discipline. Generally, the people who hit their kids are the people who were hit as kids too. It makes sense. Yet when you look at the pictures (again, you can look them up online), it's disgusting. Disciplining your kids doesn't mean you can hurt them however badly you want. Even worse is that he's got such outspoken defenders. Charles Barkley went so far as to say that all black parents whip their kids, and that under those circumstances, every black parent is going to jail. (Are these the role models for the black community these days? I don't want to sound ignorant, but, how is this ok? Were I black, I'd be super pissed at these comments. They don't reflect "black culture" - whatever that really means anyway - very kindly.)
Not to get all political and all, but both situations, as messed up as they are, both rely on one fundamental situation: these players have the power, and they generally get away with it because they're abusing people without it. All this talk about "due process," is fine and dandy, but just take a moment to consider what exactly that means. The law is actually on the side of the abuser. Innocent until proven guilty, but these are situations that largely build off of hearsay and "character." And these popular, wealthy NFL players are naturally going to get the benefit of the doubt. (Although, the video tape removes the benefit from Rice, but strangely, people haven't removed the benefit of the doubt from Peterson, who also has photographic evidence proving his abuses.) Either way, the victims are fairly powerless in every capacity.
What's even more messed up is that Ben Roethlisberger got suspended for six games for personal conduct violations in regards to sexual harassment case that actually did have a bit of a muddled story. Nothing was ever definitive about those situations, yet Goodell suspended him for six games. Rice punches his fiancee and knocks her out and they give him a two game suspension. Then the whole Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald situations, and they don't even get a one-game suspension!
The key to the lack of suspensions in the Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald cases is that whole "due process" thing. And while Roethlisberger sounded like a total sleazeball back in the day (he's one of those guys who seems to have turned it around, which is always nice to see), he wasn't afforded that luxury. Yet somehow when it comes to enacting real violence on another person - woman or child - the league suddenly cares about "due process." When it comes to even more horrendous crimes, the league wants to wait and see. Let the courts figure it out. Of course, the NFL has nothing to do with the inherent flaws in the legal system that tend to create a hostile environment for victims of domestic violence (to the point that many women and men don't report it when it happens). And that just leaves an even more bitter taste in the mouth.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is that this isn't anything new. This is a league that wouldn't suspend Ray Lewis (who even went on to become the NFL MVP.) This is the league that suspended Michael Vick indefinitely a day after his arrest, then allowed his prison time to serve as his league suspension (in all, Vick's NFL suspension was two games - hey! Killing dogs is just as bad as knocking your fiancee unconscious!) This is a league that gave an "indefinite" (but six game) suspension to Adam "Pacman" Jones for his involvement in a night club shooting (but didn't suspend Ray Lewis for his involvement in a stabbing), then let him back in the league where he still somehow gets work. Even Donte Stallworth kept finding work after a year long suspension for a DUI manslaughter charge. (To his credit, Stallworth is one of the few NFL players to get into legal trouble and fully accept responsibility for his actions.) Ray Rice wasn't even the only Ravens player on the Ravens roster to be charged with domestic violence! Terrell Suggs punched and dragged his girlfriend years earlier. Suspension? Nope. And he did it multiple times, and did some crazy things (like poured bleach on her and her son and kicked her in the nose). Brandon Marshall of the Bears also has a bit of a history (and it's kind of crazy - I actually really like Marshall and I do think he's one of those players who's kind of turned it around, but it is hard to get over his earlier years).
The league cares more about substance abuse than violence, as evident by Gordon's season long suspension for marijuana, Colts' owner Jim Irsay's six game suspension for drugs and a DUI, Wes Welker's four game suspension for amphetamines, and Matt Prater's four game suspension for alcohol issues. But even as a sports league, the NFL is somehow above PED controversy. Brian Cushing (Texans) was suspended years ago for PEDs and was a top candidate for defensive rookie of the year that same season. Shawn Merriman (former Charger) was caught as well and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. NFL fans not only give zero shits about the players beating up women and children; they don't care about the players cheating (unless it's the Patriots, who didn't actually "cheat"). Frankly, it's astonishing that the NFL doesn't get the kind of flack that Major League Baseball does. Half of Seattle's roster in the past few years have face some kind of suspension for PEDs. They win the championship and no one says anything about it. Dick Sherman even escaped his PED suspension on a legal technicality (and not that he didn't actually do it).
Still, when it comes to domestic violence, there's a whole myriad of issues at hand. Stats won't tell the whole story. On the one hand, the percentage of NFL players arrested for domestic violence is much smaller than the overall national average of that age bracket. On the other hand, conviction rates for professional athletes is about half that of the national average. We can interpret this on the surface as, hey, the NFL doesn't have a domestic violence problem, and even if it looks like they do, they're probably innocent. This, of course, fails to take into consideration that many of these cases are determined by juries (and it's hard to imagine in this day and age a celebrity athlete like Adrian Peterson having a completely fair trial). The rates might also be deceptive because reporting domestic violence caused by a celebrity athlete is inevitably going to show up in the public eye, and those women are going to be scrutinized even more harshly by even more people. There will be news cameras and talking heads on television calling her character into question. (See Big Ben cases.) If there's already little security provided in the normal world, where it's suspected that most domestic violence cases never get reported to begin with, it stands to reason that when committed by a celebrity, it's even less safe.
But at the end of the day, it's the NFL. It's one of the most successful businesses ever! It's in the public eye. Children look up to their players. And it seems we're all ok with thugs, wife beaters, and child abusers so long as they can run really fast and hold onto the football. Personally, I'm having a hard time keeping focus on the good guys like DeAngelo Williams, who recently dyed tips of his dreads pink in honor of his mother who passed from breast cancer and played a big role in the NFL's embracing of the Breast Cancer Awareness cause.
It's a situation where sure, an overwhelming majority of NFL players aren't criminals. This is obviously true. The problem is, there shouldn't be any child abusers, wife beaters, dog killers, and murder accomplices in the NFL. All this recent activity really makes the Patriots' handling of Aaron Hernandez seem like the best and most ideal way they could. Triple murder is perhaps more of a black and white issue than anything else, but Robert Kraft - when he heard of the investigation - said that he would release Hernandez if he were charged with as much as obstruction of justice (perhaps learning from the Ray Lewis situation over a decade earlier). When the story broke that he was charged of murder, the Patriots cut him without hesitation, told him to stay away from the premises, and offered jersey exchanges for fans who had his jersey.
It's a shame that more sports organizations don't put real life above football more readily. And it's really starting to kill the NFL buzz. For me, it's getting a bit more difficult to really get into this season.
Let's not forget in all this due process talk though, Ray Rice knocked out his fiancee in front of a security camera. He coldly tried to drag her out of the elevator. The NFL may or may not have seen the tape (but probably did). And Ray Rice pleaded not motherfucking guilty.
To be somewhat fair, the Rice situation is a bit different from the Greg Hardy (Panthers) situation and the Ray McDonald (49ers) situation.. When news broke out way back in February that Rice had punched his fiancee in the face so hard that she was knocked unconscious, it was already an abhorrent scenario. Yet both the Ravens organization and the NFL were reluctant to do anything. As more was revealed about the case, commissioner Roger Goodell slapped him with a measly two game suspension. This, of course, sparked the joke that in the NFL, hitting a joint was worse than hitting your fiancee (as this situation was happening at the same time as Browns' receiver Josh Gordon was facing a year-long suspension for drug abuse after having been found out to have smoke marijuana for the third time in his career).
Already though, this is a league where smoking pot three times is worse than knocking your fiancee out cold. The priorities of the league already appear messed up. There was great public outcry at the weak suspension to begin with, but things only got worse when the video tape of the incident was released. If you haven't seen it, you should look it up. Apart from the fact that Rice just straight up cold-cocks his fiancee; he also seems extremely cavalier about her unconscious body. I don't want to comment on whether this sort of thing has happened before between them, or what. I don't know. Most people reporting on the matter don't. Still, perhaps the most disturbing part of the video is that he just goes on trying to drag her unconscious body out of the elevator like it were an annoying inconvenience.
That's when the shit storm got really intense. The Ravens cut Rice. Taking a page from the Patriots in the Hernandez fiasco, the Ravens even offered a jersey exchange for fans (although I'm curious how many exchanged their Ray Rice jerseys for Terrell Suggs jerseys - another Ravens player to have a couple counts of domestic violence under his belt). The league suspended Rice indefinitely (but as always, left a door open for his possible return). Both the NFL and Ravens organization created an excuse for having not been more serious with this: both claimed they hadn't seen the video.
Well, apart from the fact that later, there are reports that that isn't actually true and that law enforcement officials had actually sent the tape to the NFL so odds are, someone in the league offices saw it, the fact remains that the video tape ultimately changed nothing. The facts we already knew were merely confirmed, but nothing changed. We already knew that Rice punched his fiancee. We already knew that he knocked her out. And we already knew that he tried to drag her out of the elevator before running into other people. These were the facts we already knew. What did the video change? We had known this exact situation had transpired months earlier. Yet now they're trying to cover their asses.
Fact is, the NFL never took this situation seriously.
But now the NFL realizes that maybe this does matter a bit. The sad fact is, the only reason the Panthers deactivated Greg Hardy and the only reason the Vikings deactivated Adrian Peterson was because of the Ray Rice fallout. It's quite simple. No video, no problem. Shit. The 49ers didn't even bother to deactivate Ray McDonald for their prime time implosion. But already, Peterson is confirmed for the next game. McDonald never faced deactivation to begin with. And as much as I want to believe that my NFC team - the Panthers - will do the right thing, it's hard to imagine Hardy sitting out too much longer. And let's also not ignore that Peterson and Hardy were not actually suspended. They were merely deactivated. That is such a huge fundamental difference.
The league has spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to draw in a female fanbase, and it's been more successful than pretty much every major sports league in the country. Yet they've done very little to show that they actually take domestic violence seriously.
The Peterson story isn't much better. Instead of punching his wife, he merely beat up his children with a stick, causing some pretty bad injuries. He's been indicted with negligence and reckless endangerment, but it's a text book case of child abuse. The saddest part of both stories is that all of these players have their supporters and defenders. I try not to give the internet credence, but there are people who honestly believe Rice acted in self-defense! (For the record, that's extremely fucked up.) Peterson has an even greater defense: it's his right to discipline his children how he sees fit. After all, Peterson himself had received similar discipline. Generally, the people who hit their kids are the people who were hit as kids too. It makes sense. Yet when you look at the pictures (again, you can look them up online), it's disgusting. Disciplining your kids doesn't mean you can hurt them however badly you want. Even worse is that he's got such outspoken defenders. Charles Barkley went so far as to say that all black parents whip their kids, and that under those circumstances, every black parent is going to jail. (Are these the role models for the black community these days? I don't want to sound ignorant, but, how is this ok? Were I black, I'd be super pissed at these comments. They don't reflect "black culture" - whatever that really means anyway - very kindly.)
Not to get all political and all, but both situations, as messed up as they are, both rely on one fundamental situation: these players have the power, and they generally get away with it because they're abusing people without it. All this talk about "due process," is fine and dandy, but just take a moment to consider what exactly that means. The law is actually on the side of the abuser. Innocent until proven guilty, but these are situations that largely build off of hearsay and "character." And these popular, wealthy NFL players are naturally going to get the benefit of the doubt. (Although, the video tape removes the benefit from Rice, but strangely, people haven't removed the benefit of the doubt from Peterson, who also has photographic evidence proving his abuses.) Either way, the victims are fairly powerless in every capacity.
What's even more messed up is that Ben Roethlisberger got suspended for six games for personal conduct violations in regards to sexual harassment case that actually did have a bit of a muddled story. Nothing was ever definitive about those situations, yet Goodell suspended him for six games. Rice punches his fiancee and knocks her out and they give him a two game suspension. Then the whole Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald situations, and they don't even get a one-game suspension!
The key to the lack of suspensions in the Hardy, Peterson, and McDonald cases is that whole "due process" thing. And while Roethlisberger sounded like a total sleazeball back in the day (he's one of those guys who seems to have turned it around, which is always nice to see), he wasn't afforded that luxury. Yet somehow when it comes to enacting real violence on another person - woman or child - the league suddenly cares about "due process." When it comes to even more horrendous crimes, the league wants to wait and see. Let the courts figure it out. Of course, the NFL has nothing to do with the inherent flaws in the legal system that tend to create a hostile environment for victims of domestic violence (to the point that many women and men don't report it when it happens). And that just leaves an even more bitter taste in the mouth.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is that this isn't anything new. This is a league that wouldn't suspend Ray Lewis (who even went on to become the NFL MVP.) This is the league that suspended Michael Vick indefinitely a day after his arrest, then allowed his prison time to serve as his league suspension (in all, Vick's NFL suspension was two games - hey! Killing dogs is just as bad as knocking your fiancee unconscious!) This is a league that gave an "indefinite" (but six game) suspension to Adam "Pacman" Jones for his involvement in a night club shooting (but didn't suspend Ray Lewis for his involvement in a stabbing), then let him back in the league where he still somehow gets work. Even Donte Stallworth kept finding work after a year long suspension for a DUI manslaughter charge. (To his credit, Stallworth is one of the few NFL players to get into legal trouble and fully accept responsibility for his actions.) Ray Rice wasn't even the only Ravens player on the Ravens roster to be charged with domestic violence! Terrell Suggs punched and dragged his girlfriend years earlier. Suspension? Nope. And he did it multiple times, and did some crazy things (like poured bleach on her and her son and kicked her in the nose). Brandon Marshall of the Bears also has a bit of a history (and it's kind of crazy - I actually really like Marshall and I do think he's one of those players who's kind of turned it around, but it is hard to get over his earlier years).
The league cares more about substance abuse than violence, as evident by Gordon's season long suspension for marijuana, Colts' owner Jim Irsay's six game suspension for drugs and a DUI, Wes Welker's four game suspension for amphetamines, and Matt Prater's four game suspension for alcohol issues. But even as a sports league, the NFL is somehow above PED controversy. Brian Cushing (Texans) was suspended years ago for PEDs and was a top candidate for defensive rookie of the year that same season. Shawn Merriman (former Charger) was caught as well and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. NFL fans not only give zero shits about the players beating up women and children; they don't care about the players cheating (unless it's the Patriots, who didn't actually "cheat"). Frankly, it's astonishing that the NFL doesn't get the kind of flack that Major League Baseball does. Half of Seattle's roster in the past few years have face some kind of suspension for PEDs. They win the championship and no one says anything about it. Dick Sherman even escaped his PED suspension on a legal technicality (and not that he didn't actually do it).
Still, when it comes to domestic violence, there's a whole myriad of issues at hand. Stats won't tell the whole story. On the one hand, the percentage of NFL players arrested for domestic violence is much smaller than the overall national average of that age bracket. On the other hand, conviction rates for professional athletes is about half that of the national average. We can interpret this on the surface as, hey, the NFL doesn't have a domestic violence problem, and even if it looks like they do, they're probably innocent. This, of course, fails to take into consideration that many of these cases are determined by juries (and it's hard to imagine in this day and age a celebrity athlete like Adrian Peterson having a completely fair trial). The rates might also be deceptive because reporting domestic violence caused by a celebrity athlete is inevitably going to show up in the public eye, and those women are going to be scrutinized even more harshly by even more people. There will be news cameras and talking heads on television calling her character into question. (See Big Ben cases.) If there's already little security provided in the normal world, where it's suspected that most domestic violence cases never get reported to begin with, it stands to reason that when committed by a celebrity, it's even less safe.
But at the end of the day, it's the NFL. It's one of the most successful businesses ever! It's in the public eye. Children look up to their players. And it seems we're all ok with thugs, wife beaters, and child abusers so long as they can run really fast and hold onto the football. Personally, I'm having a hard time keeping focus on the good guys like DeAngelo Williams, who recently dyed tips of his dreads pink in honor of his mother who passed from breast cancer and played a big role in the NFL's embracing of the Breast Cancer Awareness cause.
It's a situation where sure, an overwhelming majority of NFL players aren't criminals. This is obviously true. The problem is, there shouldn't be any child abusers, wife beaters, dog killers, and murder accomplices in the NFL. All this recent activity really makes the Patriots' handling of Aaron Hernandez seem like the best and most ideal way they could. Triple murder is perhaps more of a black and white issue than anything else, but Robert Kraft - when he heard of the investigation - said that he would release Hernandez if he were charged with as much as obstruction of justice (perhaps learning from the Ray Lewis situation over a decade earlier). When the story broke that he was charged of murder, the Patriots cut him without hesitation, told him to stay away from the premises, and offered jersey exchanges for fans who had his jersey.
It's a shame that more sports organizations don't put real life above football more readily. And it's really starting to kill the NFL buzz. For me, it's getting a bit more difficult to really get into this season.
Let's not forget in all this due process talk though, Ray Rice knocked out his fiancee in front of a security camera. He coldly tried to drag her out of the elevator. The NFL may or may not have seen the tape (but probably did). And Ray Rice pleaded not motherfucking guilty.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Thoughts on LeBron James.
Now that the World Cup is coming to a close (and the US has been out for a while now), it's time to move on to other things. The biggest thing rocking the sports world right now is the question of which superstar basketball player will end up at which team? Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade are all up in the air, but of course, no one is bigger than LeBron James. Word on the (internet) street is that it's really up between Miami and Cleveland. The latter, of course, is complicated because of their rocky history.
Before going on, I have something to confess. It's tough to admit, and I know my mama and my sister will be ashamed of me, but I'm just not a LeBron hater. Don't get me wrong here, there are things about him that I don't like, sure. Is he confident to the point of arrogant? Yep. Does that somehow mean he's not the most dominant player in the league today? Nope. Maybe a healthy Kobe Bryant could make his case, and Kevin Durant certainly can state his case, provided, ya know, he ever deliver in the post season. And of course, I'd obviously take a complete team like the Spurs over a team that is James and a bench full of scrubs. But if everyone were honest, James is obviously the most dominant player in the NBA.
Sure, James got his rings by colluding to be part of a super team with other team-carrying stars like Bosh and Wade, but there's no mistaking it: James was the guy. He was the leader of that time, no matter how much people might like Wade over James. Bosh stepped up in the post season each year, but by the end, he was a shell of himself. As badly outmatched as the Heat were in the Finals against San Antonio, they were only there because of James. He carried that team. And why is James singled out for going to a team with more talent? What great team didn't have a multitude of incredible talent? Certainly not the Bulls, nor the Lakers, nor the Celtics. Also, how come Shaq never got hate for going to a team with a true number one?
Fact is, LeBron was unjustly criticized for his actual decision, almost in lieu of legitimate criticism of The Decision program. Of course, James rightfully deserves any and all criticism for his handling of announcing the decision. It was completely unprofessional and immature. However, one can't use that as justification for Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. James was what? 25-ish years old? When it comes to athletes, we tend to expect a lot out of them behavior-wise. It's very easy to forget that sports is really a young person's industry, where the cream of the crop are in their early to mid twenties. And while they're often far more mature and professional than many, they're still basically kids. James brought criticism upon himself for the way he announced his decision, and sure it says something about his arrogance that he conducted it that way, but it's also important to keep in perspective that he was a young man who had an entire city's sports dreams thrown on him fresh out of high school. And he nearly delivered entirely by himself.
But Gilbert's reaction? He wrote a scathing letter and posted it online for the world to see. And the crazy thing is, he only just took it down the other day when he thought he could possibly woo James back to his team! If you haven't read it and you think he should go back to Cleveland, you really should check it out.
"As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier."
So he's already acknowledging James as a thing of the past, but also, this is more than criticism of The Decision, but an unreasonable attack on his actual decision itself. James did not desert Cleveland any more than Julius Peppers deserted North Carolina to play for the Chicago Bears. The fact is, James is not required to stay in Cleveland his entire career. Yes, the idea of the hometown hero staying put for a career and possibly bringing glory to his homeland is a compelling one, but athletes aren't slaves or indentured servants. They are and should be allowed to seek new experiences and opportunities and environments. James obviously felt Cleveland wasn't the right environment (frankly, rightfully so). He is under no obligation to spend his entire life in Cleveland. This is a completely unfair attack on James's decision to leave Ohio.
"This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional culminating with a national TV special of 'his' decision..."
At this point, his legitimate, reasonable, and understandable criticism of James's announcement turns into a personal attack on his character. Did James really behave in a more narcissistic manner than Dan Gilbert did with his letter? And really, is there anything more narcissistic than owning a professional sports team in one of America's big three sports? Gilbert has been nothing but narcissistic as an owner. Just look at his role in the last NBA lock out! The thing is, his unmerited personal attack undermines his legitimate criticism.
"...the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you, nor NEVER will betray you."
I understand emotions were at a high, but how can anyone possibly defend this kind of attack primarily because a player leaves your team? And speaking of betrayal, why should Cavs fans have any more faith in Gilbert? Gilbert rode James's coat tails for seven years before James finally had enough of a mediocre team built around him while the owner asks him to carry them. Gilbert is every bit as responsible for James's leaving as James himself. Perhaps if Gilbert actually did something to really build a team, rather than just throwing random dudes on the court and expecting too much of his star... And I don't care how much you hate LeBron James, no one can ever say he's not hard-working. It's understandable that Cavs fans would feel emotional in the aftermath of James's departure, but c'mon. He gave you seven years where, frankly, your team overachieved solely because of him. Why is that being completely and utterly ignored here?
"You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal."
They also don't deserve Dan Gilbert as their owner. Also, this is sports. What exactly was cowardly about his decision to leave? What? It's his fault that Pat Riley had built a better team than Gilbert and company? Grow up.
He then goes on to guarantee a title. It's safe to assume that he meant for Cleveland and not LeBron, but well, we know how it went. James went on to appear in four straight championships while Cleveland has gone right back to being totally forgettable.
Basic point here is, Dan Gilbert was almost 50 years old and was the head of a major company. He is the top of the chain. James erred with his TV special, but this behavior from the owner is completely unacceptable. Given that Gilbert has also fought against player-rights in the bargaining agreement discussions, I've got to say, why would anyone want to play for a guy like that? Gilbert isn't overtly racist like Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but there is something to be said about an owner who views his players as "his property" and that they owe it to him to stay put. If Gilbert wanted James to stay, he should have spent those seven years he already had doing more to build a championship-caliber squad. He didn't. James left because of it.
Even more were the hordes of angry fans who threw all of their LeBron gear onto pyres. I don't want to make too much of an association with race here, but I can't help but notice that more often than not, these events wind up being angry white people burning the jerseys of black players. (Not suggesting black people don't participate in this as well, but, well, I've watched a lot of those videos and there is a pretty clear common denominator.) It's not even to say that they never burn the jerseys of white players as well. (See Matt Schaub jerseys being burned to a crisp during his tumultuous season.)
However, given, ya know, social history of this nation, the fact that so many people are burning jerseys of their former favorite athletes - an industry predominantly made up of black and other minority players - is almost harrowing to watch. I understand that presumably, most fans don't mean anything by it. They're just upset that their favorite athlete on their team left. It's even worse when they go to a rival team. But it's hard to remove the racial connections from it. It's such a drastic overreaction and burning anything - a jersey, a flag, a cross - is such a powerful and hateful symbol.
When you look back at the owner's response to James's departure, and when you look at the fans' reaction, why would James want to go back there? The people of Cleveland almost literally burnt that bridge, and certainly their owner should not be rewarded for his even more narcissistic and immature behavior. I'm sorry, but suddenly pandering to James because you realize he may consider returning to your team if you offer a sweet enough deal shows just how entitled Gilbert feels. He clearly feels that as long as he puts enough money on the table or offers to give James whatever he wants, James should come back.
And if James decides to either stay in Miami or head somewhere else? What will Gilbert's reaction be? I shutter to imagine. I just hope that his next hate letter isn't written in Comic Sans.
All this comes down to the simple fact that no matter what contract an athlete signs, s/he is not actually property. These athletes don't "belong" to anyone. Maybe the rights to speak with them about contract negotiations do, but the player his or herself do not. Dan Gilbert obviously does not think this is the case. His attempts to lure James back to Cleveland are shallow and callous.
But no matter how big a hater you may be of LeBron James, certainly everyone can agree that if LeBron is expected to have some archaic sense of honor, then surely Gilbert should be expected to as well, yes?
As for going to the team that gives him the most likely shot at winning titles: what exactly is wrong with that? Here in New England, it's funny hearing Celtics fans bash James for doing that while Patriots fans are stoked to have Darrelle Revis, who clearly chose New England because they are perennial Super Bowl favorites. And frankly, what truly great team didn't have multiple top-tier talent? Are we supposed to think less of Randy Moss for coming to New England in 2007? Or what about Jarome Iginla coming to the Bruins in 2013 (of which his contract stated the Flames could not trade him without his permission, and he gave them a list of four teams he would be willing to be traded too - all teams having won the Stanley Cup in the past four years). So why all the hate for James?
I suspect it's that we culturally have gravitated towards "hatin'" as a community activity. The "cool kids" don't like the popular things. At the end of the day, LeBron James is indisputably one of the greatest pure talents the NBA has ever seen. I'm not saying he's the best ever, but he's among the best. It's a little sad to see that so many people would rather tear down greatness than soak it up and enjoy it.
James has made mistakes, to be sure. But he's done far less than Dan Gilbert and Cleveland fans have. He shouldn't reward them. If this is ultimately about "responsibility," then Gilbert and Cavs fans should have to accept responsibility for their actions.
He shouldn't stay in Miami, but he sure as hell should not return to the land that did everything they could to burn that bridge ten-fold.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
The Reasons for Loving (and Hating) Soccer:
Soccer is one of those sports in America that seems perpetually on the cusp. Every time the World Cup comes around, our collective interest in soccer grows. People start playing more pick up and the MLS tends to see an increase in attendance. The question is always whether or not that can be sustained. Working against soccer as a commercially successful sport in America is that it's a free flowing game with no opportunities for commercial breaks. There's still room for ad space, but most advertisers probably feel commercials are more valuable than the billboard space around the field. This also means you don't see soccer matches on television very often unless you buy the extra package cable deals that include the specific soccer channel.
To be fair to Major League Soccer, it has been steadily growing over the years in its own right. Created at the end of 1993 as part of the deal with FIFA to host the 1994 World Cup, the first MLS season was in 1996. This is the fifth World Cup since the inaugural MLS season. It's not unreasonable to assume that the World Cup brings new fans into the stands, but they've actually been able to keep a growing number of fans. MLS now averages greater attendance than the NBA and NHL, and more than many franchise in Major League Baseball. Television ratings don't quite follow that trend, but Fox and ESPN have dished out $600 million dollars to wrangle the rights away from NBC. Still, ratings have actually declined in recent years.
Every four years, we usually hear one of two things. The first is how amazing soccer is and how beneficial the World Cup is for MLS. And yes, MLS has seen an increase in attendance of up to 62%. But then we also hear that typical, "who cares about soccer?" argument too. Well, clearly that sentiment isn't accurate anymore. The World Cup on ESPN has drawn viewership in the eight-digit range. So why is it that in the United States, soccer falls into this weird area where more people are caring, but it's still not all that popular? (Though just for the record, MLS has an average attendance close to France's and Holland's top domestic leagues.)
I can really only speak for myself, but as a fairly typical American sports fan, perhaps these apply to many others as well.
WHY I LOVE SOCCER:
1. Free-Flow Game
Americans aren't exactly known for our attention spans. Just look at the design of the big three sports Stateside. Football is stop-go where in sixty minutes of game clock, only about fifteen minutes worth of action actually happens. American football is almost like a war strategy game. You set up your pieces while the other team sets up theirs. You line them up, see what they look like, then try to out-execute the other. Baseball, like football, is structurally built as a sport to give you time to look away. Little action ever happens in a baseball game, so the thrill is in the build up. A team sport, baseball actually builds up more of a one on one focus, with the pitcher dueling each batter. The other guys are there for support. The NBA is fast very fast-paced, but also has a lot of stoppage that gives viewers a chance to tune out for a minute and give their attention a break. Free throws, time outs, and constant clock stoppage all ensure breaks in the play so that while it goes back and forth very quickly, they also give you plenty of breathers.
What makes soccer interesting is that it's a free flowing game. When the ball is in play, everything goes into motion. It's more about the slow build up than the "score quickly" aspect of many American sports. Teams have to move around and move the ball around to try and crack the opposing defense. Sometimes you can move really quickly on counter attacks or sometimes the best way to move forward is to pass the ball backwards and swing it to the other side. Though many find this constant motion engaging, to the untrained eye it can seem like slow-burning chaos.
In many ways, soccer combines things that people love about basketball and football with things they love about baseball. If basketball and football are about setting up your pieces, seeing what your opponent is doing, and both executing and reacting to them, soccer is just the same. Meanwhile, it incorporates the "suspense" and build up seen in baseball. If the most exciting thing in baseball is the moment just before a pitch, then those fans can find solace in the free kick or the corner kick or, if applicable, the penalty kick. Soccer isn't built around set up and the moment before action in the same way that baseball is, but it certainly has it. It's also just like football and basketball in that your team can be playing really well, but one mistake turns everything around. Case in point:
Which actually leads into the next argument:
2. Points Mean More
Often times, people will hate on soccer because it is often a low scoring affair. Games typically end with scorelines like 2-1, 1-0, or even in 1-1 draws. Americans don't typically like draws (although American football allows for it to happen too). Soccer is a lot like hockey in that scoring is actually made to be really difficult. You can go a full ninety minutes without a single goal scored. To the points-focused culture of American sports, the lack of scores leads people to think it's a bore.
Additionally, goals are so difficult and happen so rarely in context of a game that even if your team is being badly outplayed, you still have a chance. Yes, there's definitely a point of no return. Typically if you find yourself down by three goals (and definitely more), it's very unlikely you'll come back. However, because one goal is one point and they're really difficult to score, all it takes is one good play or one lucky break or one mistake from the opponent, and you're right back in it. It's one of the only sports where another team can be truly dominating a game yet find themselves at risk of either drawing or losing instead of pulling out the win. (See how the US made a game of it against Belgium even though Belgium probably should have won that game 5-1.)
With basketball and football, come backs can happen, sure. But typically, if you find yourself being out played in either sport, it's going to take more than one lucky break or good play to pull you back into it. With soccer, unlike with basketball or football, the game can truly break wide open in a matter of a minute. Those other sports tend to be about momentum. Outplaying the other team is really the only way to make up ground on a team that might have been otherwise outplaying you.
While I can understand the disdain for draws, are we really going to sum up the value of a sport in its scoreline? Isn't it the game itself that makes it entertaining? Imagine if you had one of the all time great defensive battles in American football. After sixty minutes of awesome displays of defensive prowess and entertaining physical battles, it ends with a scoreline of 10-3. One wouldn't really describe that as a bad game (though some offensive-minded folks might consider it boring).
Point being, scoring isn't everything in sports. It certainly isn't an indicator of how exciting a game is. Consider that one of the classic Super Bowls in modern history was the first Patriots/Giants game. While Patriots fans may loathe to remember it, it's hard to describe it as anything other than a classic. The final scoreline was 17-14. Sure, that's 31 total points; it's also only five scores between them. If that were a soccer match, it would have been a 3-2 game, which is not that absurd a result.
Football and basketball are also designed to encourage scoring. The different ways to score, with scores having differing point values, decreases the chances of ties. There's no real way to do that with soccer, just as you can't with hockey or baseball. A score is a point. The excitement with soccer comes from how difficult it is to score - just the same as it is with hockey. And, of course, the difficulty of scoring means that when you do see a goal, it's probably the most awesome and ridiculous thing you've seen.
3. Goals Are Pretty Awesome
Even though scoring might not be as common as it is in any other sport, the goals scored are almost always awesome to watch. Sure, not every goal is particularly thrilling, but more often than not, you see a goal and just think, "Whoa...are you kidding me?"
You get this element in all sports, really, but to a lesser degree. Field goals in football are pretty uninteresting to watch unless there's greater context attached (like the game being on the line). Safeties rarely happen and usually happen because of a penalty. And touchdowns are kind of 50-50. Sure, you get crazy touchdowns like the one to conclude the Cardinals/Steelers Super Bowl of a few years ago, but often you get pretty straight forward scores. Rushes up the middle, quarterback sneaks, quick out passes are all common sources of touchdowns. They're important, but you don't typically watch a run up the middle from two yards away and walk away shaking your head in disbelief.
And it's also not to suggest there aren't crazy baskets made in the NBA. You do get insane three pointers or half-court shots and exciting dunks, but they make so many shots and there are so many points scored that you generally don't think much of any of the points scored. There's no other sport in which scoring is as commonly impressive than with soccer.
4. Rules Are Pretty Simple
Unlike most American sports, the rules to soccer are fairly simple and straight forward. There's the handball, offside, fouls, and the box. Then there is the three substitution rule. Otherwise, that's pretty much it. While officiating might be among the worst (see WHAT I HATE ABOUT SOCCER), soccer has perhaps the smallest "rule book" in any sport.
American football is full to the brim of crazy and overly convoluted rules (as Oakland Raiders fans are aware of). Basketball is pretty straight forward too, but there are a variety of complicated rules (five seconds, three seconds, flagrant/technical fouls, bonus). I will still never understand how there is a defensive three seconds rule.
Even baseball, which doesn't see a lot of action in the game, has a variety of silly rules (see infield fly rule). Soccer is a bit like hockey in that for the sake of keeping the game flowing, there aren't an overabundance of rules. It's easy to follow. When the official blows a whistle or a side judge raises a flag, you know it's one of three things - foul, offside, or handball. That's it!
5. Combination of Athleticism and Skill
To be clear, every sport is a combination of athleticism and skill. A wide receiver going up to grab a pass, a shooting guard taking a quick three pointer from the corner, any baseball player hitting the ball, is going to be impressive to watch. Most people can't do those sorts of things, or at least not under pressure. What tends to get lost in soccer's display of athleticism and skill is that they are running around for literally miles and using their feet to move the ball. This basically means that every time you kick the ball, you're putting yourself slightly out of balance and at risk. Yes, flopping is a concern, but it's easy to ignore the possibility that a lot of these players hitting the deck are doing so because when you're sprinting and trying to kick a soccer ball, it really doesn't take much to knock you on your ass or send you flying. This fact makes it even more impressive when you see such high powered, deadly accurate strikes.
Plus, the amount of control these players have is ridiculous. What they can do to the ball with their feet is nothing short of spectacular to watch.
Also consider that these players don't wear any padding except on their shins. And anyone who's ever played soccer knows that those shin pads don't really stop a lot from hurting. If you get kicked in the shin, it's going to hurt. And frankly, those balls aren't insubstantial. (I'm still never sure how people don't get concussed heading the ball as often as they do.) When I was little, someone rocketed a shot that hit me square in the face. It literally knocked me out for a minute.
To be sure, flopping and diving and trying to sell the foul is definitely a problem with the sport, but I'm not sure people ever give credit to the actual toughness of most of these players. Some theatrics don't negate the actual physicality of the game.
6. High Stakes
This is kind of a double edged sword for soccer. Being the most popular sport in the entire world means that every game has a lot of eyes watching and a lot of pressure. For as big a spectacle as the Super Bowl is, it pales in comparison of the World Cup. The entire country watches the Super Bowl. The entire world watches the World Cup. It's insane. In many ways, the World Cup feels almost like one might expect the Olympics to feel. It's a time for national pride to come out in a relatively safe environment. And for the players and coaches, it's a way to broadcast themselves to elite clubs.
Soccer is also a sport with a notorious history as well. Violence among fans is certainly not unheard of and in poorer nations, people have literally been assassinated as a result of a match. Players, officials, and fans even. It might be the only sport in the world in which for some countries, you actually fear for the players or officials after the game. (See Iraq's national team being tortured in the '90s for losing matches.) This isn't so much a reflection of soccer as much as it is the messed up nature of the world, but it does add more weight to everything.
7. Pride
Sports teams often give us a means to channel our pride. On the league level, it is more closely related to our region. It also cultivates rivalries among cities that - while appearing to divide us - actually unites us in a really strange way.
Still, the significance of a nation's international club gives people a safe place to channel national pride without the political attachments. Consider how put-off people might be if they saw a huge crowd of Germans celebrating their German pride. It might be a bit unfair at this point, but given their history in the past hundred years, many neighbors might grow uncomfortable. International soccer provides a safe place to release that pride, without fear of judgment or reading too much into it. (Although it also helps fuel greater rivalries. Greece and Germany seem to hate each other on the pitch, for example, largely because of politics.)
There's also something to be said about international competition. In the United States, we crown our champions "World Champions." Though our leagues have a growing number of international star players, our American teams don't actually play other national teams. And sure, we're one of the only countries in the world invested in American football, so it's safe to bet that any national team we could come up with would beat any national teams created around the world. Yet when you look at the results of the Baseball World Cup, the United States has only won it four times! Cuba is better at our "national past time" than we are. Sure, we won back to back Baseball World Cups in 2007 and 2009, but that was following a 33 year drought where the best we could muster was second place three times in that span. The US hasn't placed above 4th place in the recently established World Baseball Classic. In 2010, the US basketball team finally reclaimed the top honor in the Basketball World Cup after a fourteen year drought.
Of course, this is a bit deceptive given that a lot of America's most talented athletes refuse to play in international games. It makes sense given their money is coming domestically. Still, this is something that soccer has above most American sports: people actually want to play on their international club. Being actual "world champions" matters. There's a neat mixture of international and club play, and it all matters. And no one claims to be the "world champions" because they won their German or Spanish league title.
8. Promotion and Relegation
Europe has an interesting way of organizing their leagues in that teams can essentially be promoted to a better "division" or demoted to a weaker one depending on their performance. This prevents divisions from becoming brought down by too much lackluster franchise running. (Pretty much the entire Eastern Conference in the NBA should, frankly, have been relegated to a lesser league a long time ago.) Clubs don't typically want to be relegated, so even a bad team with a bad season is encouraged to keep trying to win. Losing out is not beneficial in the way that in America, if you have a bad season, you are encouraged to tank so as to get a better spot in the draft. (American fans seem to embrace the "never give up" idea in sports, until it's clear that you aren't going to win, in which case you should intentionally lose so you get a better draft pick, and they get frustrated at you if you still play to win.)
Promotion and relegation is not a perfect system. And indeed, there are often a number of financial hardships facing teams that are relegated (further incentive to play to win and avoid relegation). Still, it can't be any worse than many American leagues, where at some point, intentionally tanking is seen as beneficial. And then, of course, you get persistently poorly run teams like the Cleveland Browns or Oakland Raiders hanging around just filling space on the schedule.
WHAT I HATE ABOUT SOCCER:
1. Stoppage Time
Stoppage Time is one of those elements in an almost self-destructively traditional sport. Soccer fans are much like baseball fans in that any proposed changes are met with almost outright disdain. Perhaps no element of the game gets more ire from casual fans, with criticism being met almost two-fold from traditionalists, than Stoppage Time.
Soccer is a ninety minute game split into two, forty-five minute halves. Americans often roll their eyes at the fact the clock runs up instead of down, but that is kind of silly. A clock running up to fifteen minutes is no different than running down to zero. The big hold up with many people though is that when the clock reaches the forty-five minute or ninety minute mark, the game continues. The officials add a seemingly random amount of time back onto the clock. Keeping the clock running means that the matches end at roughly the same time. Rarely does a match take longer than two hours (something else fundamentally different from American sports where we're used to planning our entire afternoon or evening around a game).
But the problem is that Stoppage Time makes no sense and often becomes frustrating. There's no rhyme or reason to it, other than that it usually lasts between one and six minutes. Supposedly, the time is added back on to make up for the time wasted from injuries, goals, and substitutions made throughout the half. The theory goes, Stoppage Time keeps teams and players honest because if they flop and fake injuries or stay down for longer to stop play or take longer on free/goal/corner kicks, that time comes back on Stoppage Time.
The problem, of course, is that it doesn't. Stoppage Time has never and will never match the time wasting done in a half. Taking four full soccer matches available online, I edited each match to reflect a clock that stops when the ball is dead and not in play (similar to how it works with basketball). Almost always, the ball is only in play for thirty to thirty-five minutes. That means that on the best of days, the ball is live 80% of a given half. The biggest discrepancy in a half that I found was in a 2012 match up between Germany and Belgium. In the first half, there were no injuries and no substitutions, but there were two goals scored. One minute of extra time was added. Yet in the 46 minutes of the first half, the ball was only "live" for a total of 30 minutes (with an error margin of 10 seconds in either direction). That means almost an entire third of the half was just time waster. Further evidence that Stoppage Time is completely random: the two goals alone killed about two minutes and fifteen seconds off the game clock. Yet only one minute was tacked on at the end.
The second half wasn't much different. There were several injuries that took up to a minute each to sort out, four substitutions, and two goals. Three minutes were tacked on to the end. In the second half, the ball was in play for a total of 33 minutes and 55 seconds (error margin of 15 seconds in either direction). And the weird thing is, even that is a bit deceptive since Germany had taken a 2-0 lead early in the game and had resolved to kill clock with a brutal possession game. When breaking down the biggest time wasters of the game, goal kicks and goals scored were easily the most time consuming dead-ball events.
And this is absolutely the norm. If the argument is that Stoppage Time keeps players honest and prevents them from killing time, then the argument is extremely flawed. In reality, taking extra time for throw ins, corner kicks, goal kicks, substitutions, and "injuries" is always beneficial for a team in the lead because that time is almost guaranteed to disappear. Relying on Stoppage Time to prevent time wasting is hardly as effective as stopping the clock.
Purists will then argue that stopping the clock will break up the flow of the game. This argument, of course, makes no real sense either. The flow of the game is already being broken up by time wasting! Players already stay down longer to stop the flow of the game. Goalies take extra time on goal kicks, free kicks either happen very quickly or take forever to set up. The game is already chopped up with dead ball things. Stopping the clock does nothing to break up the flow of the game. It merely creates a more accurate means of time keeping and means that you actually play the amount of soccer intended.
I can appreciate the concern that stopping the clock might open the doors to commercial breaks and TV time outs, but soccer is totally different from basketball and American football in the way that stopping the clock doesn't stop the game. It wouldn't create commercial breaks (unless, perhaps, in the case of major, time-consuming injuries). This seems like a legitimate concern, but one that is slightly misplaced.
The 2014 World Cup has created a strange new argument. We've seen an almost absurd number of Stoppage Time goals this year. The argument goes something along the lines of, "well, if you didn't have Stoppage Time, you wouldn't get this:"
A classic and iconic moment in US Soccer history, to be sure. And, of course, it happened in the 91st minute - Stoppage Time. But here's the thing: the time in Stoppage Time doesn't disappear if you stop the clock. These late, last gasp goals happen if you stop the clock! If you consider that almost 20% of any given half is literally just time wasting, then those two, three, four minutes of Stoppage Time would just be a part of that.
Bottom line: there's absolutely no real reason that Stoppage Time is still a thing except for the traditionalists who fear change (and, perhaps, efficiency). It absolutely does not prevent teams from killing time. There's no reason not to kill time if you've got the lead. Stay down an extra minute! Odds are extremely favorable that that minute isn't coming back. However, Stoppage Time is confusing, arbitrary, and random. And that is quite a turnoff.
2. Flopping
Soccer fans are fast growing tired of hearing casual fans (and non-fans) complain about flopping in the sport. "Flopping" (or more affectionately referred to as "diving") is actually existent in all sports. Any Celtics fan from the last decade is more than familiar with Paul Pierce's tendency to flail around to draw a foul and get to the line instead of actually playing the game. And in the NFL, wide receivers will do much to sell a pass interference call.
However, it is actually especially problematic in soccer. Flopping happens a lot. To be fair to the players, most casual (and non) fans don't or can't appreciate the actual agony felt in many of those collisions. Anyone who has played soccer knows that shin pads do little to actually prevent pain. And when you're sprinting around for an hour and a half, it doesn't take much to knock you over. Nor does it take much to make you sore.
But then you see crap like this:
Again, every sport has more than its share of theatrics, but against Mexico, Arjen Robben had more flops than shots on goal. And in the end, it paid off. Sure, did he get legitimately fouled in the box earlier in the game that got missed? Yeah. But his biggest flop of the entire game at the end of the second half drew a penalty in the box for the game winner. His flop literally won the game for Holland.
Before Robben's classic game full of flops, you can look back at the opening of the 2014 World Cup in which Neymar's flop inside the penalty box drew a foul call from the official, and it tied the game up. This was also one of the most egregious flops of the entire tournament. It's one thing to have all the theatrics of rolling around in agony; it's another to have athletes literally give up on a play, playing for a call instead of the ball. Again, this happens in all sports, but it does seem to happen a lot in soccer. In fact, the most successful international clubs (namely in South America and Europe) get nearly twice as many fouls called in their favor than anyone else in the world. It's so obviously a problem that the New York Times even published an article that suggest the US doesn't flop enough!
What's funny is that it's primarily a problem in the men's game. One study found that in men's soccer, more than eleven injuries occur, with an average of over seven minutes of time wasting. The women's games, by comparison, average just under six injuries per game with just a couple minutes of time wasting. (This is actually one of the reasons I actually sometimes prefer women's soccer.)
I understand that soccer fans hate hearing about the diving problem, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to deny that it isn't a big problem. Every sports has theatrics.
Even the NFL has a bit of a problem with theatrics.
It's hard to tell if soccer ultimately has a worse case of the flops than the NBA or NFL, but one of the differences is that flopping does seem to be more successful in soccer than those other sports. Flopping in the NBA - like most calls in the NBA - depend on your star power and reputation. LeBron James, for example, gets away with a lot of flops. Chris Paul does not, because he has a reputation as a flopper so officials are already looking for it. In the NFL, flopping by kickers and punters is supposed to be a penalty itself, but it's never called and if everyone were honest, they are probably coached to do so.
Though counting "flops" in any game of any sport is an extremely time consuming endeavor and thus, is difficult to determine whether there are more flops in a particular sport, it does feel like not only does soccer suffer more, they're also more beneficial. FIFA - like the NFL - is supposed to prohibit the behavior. Diving is itself punishable by a yellow card. In most occasions though, the "simulation" actually results in a foul or card for the opposing player. In 2009, UEFA suspended Eduardo da Silva for two games after video replay showed him flopping on a play that, in the game, netted him a penalty kick. MLS has also implemented post-game fines for players flopping. Ultimately though, these efforts don't appear to really be bucking the trend (though they should still exist - it would be terrible if a player was suspended on a second yellow card he got for contact with a flopping player).
Part of the problem is that players understand that theatrics will eventually pay off. However, smart soccer players only account for part of the problem:
3. Officiating
The other part of the problem is that FIFA officiating is notoriously awful. The rules might be simple, but it also leaves a lot of room for judgment. When watching more and more soccer matches, it's easy to realize that no one really knows what constitutes a foul. Officials in every sport call games differently. There's very little consistent in games that largely rely on judgment calls. Soccer doesn't just rely on judgment calls; it also does little to make life easier for the official.
Where American football is constantly trying to figure out how to officiate games more efficiently - instant reply, re-aligning refs, having multiple refs on the field - soccer is content to just let basically one guy do everything. There is one side judge on each half of the field who is responsible for calling offside and perhaps fouls close to them. The problem though is that they are stationed on just one side of the field. It's often difficult to see plays happening all the way on the other side of the field. Then, there's the time keeper (who, as we discussed earlier, just makes stuff up).
Finally, there is the main official - the only one on the field. There might not be a group of referees as fit as soccer officials. They have to do almost as much running as the players! But that's also part of the problem. Because the game can often move very quickly and the official has to keep up, and because the field is so large and there are so many players on it, the officials seem to call games based on reactions rather than what they actually saw. It's a lot of "I think I saw."
One solution might be to keep one official on the field and then having two officials - one on each end by the goals - responsible for just one half of the pitch. This would make it easier to officiate on fast counter attacks, or just help out given how many players are on the field at one time. Soccer has added the tennis replay technology for goals, so see if a ball crosses the line in really close situations. This is obviously a great addition, and it's strange that it took so long to implement. Still, officiating in soccer is easily some of the worst and most horrendously inconsistent in all of sports. Adding a couple of more officials could help that. If the argument against it is that it will get confusing, I'd just point out that in the NBA, multiple officials call fouls and things. There's no reason it can't apply to soccer as well.
Or, they could just put two linesman on opposite sides of the field with their flags. Side judges already make calls like offside, foul, and handball. More eyes on the field of play haven't necessarily helped the NFL - where officials often miss the initial action and only look at an area once a player hits the deck (which is strange because it means officials are making calls based on what they think happened rather than what they actually saw ) - but it certainly can't hurt.
4. Penalty Kicks
Penalty kicks are another point of contention between new fans and purists. Personally, I hate them as a game decider, but understand their significance in the game itself. However, something one can take away from this year's World Cup is how PKs are often rewarded in a way that isn't in the spirit of the rule. The idea of the penalty box is to prevent defending players from committing egregious fouls as attacking players zero in on goal. It makes sense. It's kind of like how in American football, pass interference is such a big call to prevent defensive players from blatantly taking out the receivers when they can. It keeps defenders honest.
The insanely high rate of PK conversions reinforces this concept. It varies very slightly by league, but PKs are converted upward to 80% of the time. The rules surrounding PKs also make things extremely favorable for the kicker. For starters, the ball is placed so close to the goal that a keeper has only a half second to react. The keeper is also not allowed to move forward off the goal line, even though the kicker can start and stop his approach on the ball at will (see Neymar).
The problem is that many fouls inside the box are not really egregious enough to merit a PK. It's not to say fouls don't happen in the box that affect the play, of course. But look at that Robben play again (in the "flop" section). If you watched that play live, it's impossible to say if that were developing into anything. Mexico's defense was pretty good that day, and either way, you can't say for sure that that play was going to end in a goal even if he were legitimately fouled (which he wasn't). Even his play earlier in the game in which he was actually fouled in the box to a no-call, you can't say for sure he was going to score. And it wasn't the most egregious of fouls.
Point being, to aware a PK on most of these fouls seems like overkill. Awarding a PK is almost the exact same thing as awarding a goal. Tell me if most of those fouls, even if totally legit, merit a goal as a punishment? The way PKs are often awarded simply by "being in the box" instead of what is actually happening on the play makes for what is easily the harshest penalty in all of sports. The only thing kind of like it is the NFL's pass interference in the endzone. If you chuck a ball into the endzone from your own 40-yard line and the refs perceive contact on a receiver in the endzone, the ball gets placed at the 1-yard line. That's literally a 59 yard penalty, and barring a turnover, is practically guaranteed to result in points. It's one of those things where the spirit of the rule is often ignored. Sure, in neither case are points absolutely guaranteed. I don't have statistics on how often PI calls in the endzone result in points (either a touchdown or a field goal), but it's safe to assume that it's a pretty high percentage as well.
The other problem is the overtime rules for soccer. For some reason, they abandoned the much superior "Golden Goal" rule, which is quite simply first-to-score wins. And if no one has scored after thirty minutes, it goes to PKs. PKs are a terrible way to decide the outcome of a game. It's almost like if an NFL game were still tied, they lined kickers up at the 40-yard line and had them kick until someone misses. Or if the NBA decided a game by having players go through free throws until one team misses. Sure, it's exciting and the build up is thrilling. As much as I hate PKs as a way to end a game, even I can admit that there is nothing more tense than penalty kicks. Even if the team I'm rooting for wins (as Costa Rico did against Greece), I still feel a little let down that they took a great game and reduced it to chance and guess work.
Perhaps I wouldn't mind PKs so much if they altered the rules from in-game PK rules. For example, what about letting the goal keeper move forward when the player begins his approach to the ball? Guys like Neymar do a strange stutter step thing, rushing, then stopping, then rushing again before making the kick. It's obviously a ploy to try and draw the goal keeper off the line so in the rare circumstance he miss a kick, he gets a do-over. Wouldn't it be more fair and exciting if the goal keeper got to rush the player once he begins his approach? It'd still be an advantage for the kicker, but at least the goal keeper can actually have a real shot at saving it, rather than seeing if they guess correctly, get lucky, or the kicking player cracks under the pressure and misses (which is actually more common than a keeper saving it, especially if you're an English player).
What's kind of funny, by the way, is that goal keepers actually increase their chances of saving it if they don't move much instead of diving in one direction or the other. The kicks are so close and happen so quickly that even guessing correctly still means the kick is likely to go in. Yet the perception is that if a keeper - even realizing that his chances are increased by not moving far - doesn't move, fans will think he didn't try. Often times, trying to stop a PK increases the likelihood of the PK going in. It's this sort of "illusion of effort." Goalies even admit that even if a kick goes right down the middle and they dove to one side and it goes in, they feel worse if they don't dive to the sides.
I don't disagree that PKs are a better alternative to "keep playing until someone wins at the end of a period" idea. After 30 minutes of overtime, those players are dead tired and their legs are jelly. They've got nothing left. The argument then goes that for player safety and welfare, it should go to PKs instead of another period. This is a fair argument, of course, provided you ignore that they specifically abandoned the Golden Goal rule, which means that players must play an extra 30 minutes even if they score a goal first. We saw this twice this week. After 90 minutes of a standstill, Germany scored in the first two minutes of Extra Time against Algeria. This meant that they had to play 28 more minutes for the same result as a Golden Goal scenario (Germany ultimately won 2-1). This also happened for Belgium, who after being stopped by Tim Howard for 90 minutes, scored in the first few minutes of Extra Time against the US in a game that also ended with the same result as Golden Goal rules. (I'd be curious to find out what percentage of games that go to Extra Time are won by teams that score first. My guess is that they more often than not win.) And really, what exactly is wrong with Golden Goal rules to begin with? As a US fan, I can appreciate having had that opportunity to tie it back up again, but at the same time, if we're going to give up a goal in under three minutes of Extra Time, we deserved to lose.
Penalty Kicks just leave a bad taste in the mouth of what was otherwise a great game. It's a bad way to decide a game, and in-game PK calls are often a ridiculous reward for a foul that more often than not wasn't worth a goal. It's not called in the spirit of the rule. Especially given how bad the officiating is and how bad the flopping situation is.
Overall, soccer is one of the great sports of the world. It's a shame it has such a traditional, purist fan base, because there is much that could be improved upon. Still, flaws and all, it's a growing sport in the US and only a matter of time before it finally breaks through the cusp.
Still, my argument is not that soccer is the most entertaining or best sport in the world. If you find it boring to watch, nothing is going to convince you that it isn't. While I can respect baseball, you'll never convince me that it's exciting (or even entertaining, really). So I get it. I'm just making the case that some of the arguments against soccer are rather unfair. It's more about respecting the game even if you don't like it. A lot of the complaints I hear from American sports fans often makes me wonder what everyone's idea of "sport" really is. I love soccer, and I don't think there's a better sporting event in the world than the World Cup. Of course, I still think the sport has much to improve on.
To be fair to Major League Soccer, it has been steadily growing over the years in its own right. Created at the end of 1993 as part of the deal with FIFA to host the 1994 World Cup, the first MLS season was in 1996. This is the fifth World Cup since the inaugural MLS season. It's not unreasonable to assume that the World Cup brings new fans into the stands, but they've actually been able to keep a growing number of fans. MLS now averages greater attendance than the NBA and NHL, and more than many franchise in Major League Baseball. Television ratings don't quite follow that trend, but Fox and ESPN have dished out $600 million dollars to wrangle the rights away from NBC. Still, ratings have actually declined in recent years.
Every four years, we usually hear one of two things. The first is how amazing soccer is and how beneficial the World Cup is for MLS. And yes, MLS has seen an increase in attendance of up to 62%. But then we also hear that typical, "who cares about soccer?" argument too. Well, clearly that sentiment isn't accurate anymore. The World Cup on ESPN has drawn viewership in the eight-digit range. So why is it that in the United States, soccer falls into this weird area where more people are caring, but it's still not all that popular? (Though just for the record, MLS has an average attendance close to France's and Holland's top domestic leagues.)
I can really only speak for myself, but as a fairly typical American sports fan, perhaps these apply to many others as well.
WHY I LOVE SOCCER:
1. Free-Flow Game
Americans aren't exactly known for our attention spans. Just look at the design of the big three sports Stateside. Football is stop-go where in sixty minutes of game clock, only about fifteen minutes worth of action actually happens. American football is almost like a war strategy game. You set up your pieces while the other team sets up theirs. You line them up, see what they look like, then try to out-execute the other. Baseball, like football, is structurally built as a sport to give you time to look away. Little action ever happens in a baseball game, so the thrill is in the build up. A team sport, baseball actually builds up more of a one on one focus, with the pitcher dueling each batter. The other guys are there for support. The NBA is fast very fast-paced, but also has a lot of stoppage that gives viewers a chance to tune out for a minute and give their attention a break. Free throws, time outs, and constant clock stoppage all ensure breaks in the play so that while it goes back and forth very quickly, they also give you plenty of breathers.
What makes soccer interesting is that it's a free flowing game. When the ball is in play, everything goes into motion. It's more about the slow build up than the "score quickly" aspect of many American sports. Teams have to move around and move the ball around to try and crack the opposing defense. Sometimes you can move really quickly on counter attacks or sometimes the best way to move forward is to pass the ball backwards and swing it to the other side. Though many find this constant motion engaging, to the untrained eye it can seem like slow-burning chaos.
In many ways, soccer combines things that people love about basketball and football with things they love about baseball. If basketball and football are about setting up your pieces, seeing what your opponent is doing, and both executing and reacting to them, soccer is just the same. Meanwhile, it incorporates the "suspense" and build up seen in baseball. If the most exciting thing in baseball is the moment just before a pitch, then those fans can find solace in the free kick or the corner kick or, if applicable, the penalty kick. Soccer isn't built around set up and the moment before action in the same way that baseball is, but it certainly has it. It's also just like football and basketball in that your team can be playing really well, but one mistake turns everything around. Case in point:
Which actually leads into the next argument:
2. Points Mean More
Often times, people will hate on soccer because it is often a low scoring affair. Games typically end with scorelines like 2-1, 1-0, or even in 1-1 draws. Americans don't typically like draws (although American football allows for it to happen too). Soccer is a lot like hockey in that scoring is actually made to be really difficult. You can go a full ninety minutes without a single goal scored. To the points-focused culture of American sports, the lack of scores leads people to think it's a bore.
Additionally, goals are so difficult and happen so rarely in context of a game that even if your team is being badly outplayed, you still have a chance. Yes, there's definitely a point of no return. Typically if you find yourself down by three goals (and definitely more), it's very unlikely you'll come back. However, because one goal is one point and they're really difficult to score, all it takes is one good play or one lucky break or one mistake from the opponent, and you're right back in it. It's one of the only sports where another team can be truly dominating a game yet find themselves at risk of either drawing or losing instead of pulling out the win. (See how the US made a game of it against Belgium even though Belgium probably should have won that game 5-1.)
With basketball and football, come backs can happen, sure. But typically, if you find yourself being out played in either sport, it's going to take more than one lucky break or good play to pull you back into it. With soccer, unlike with basketball or football, the game can truly break wide open in a matter of a minute. Those other sports tend to be about momentum. Outplaying the other team is really the only way to make up ground on a team that might have been otherwise outplaying you.
While I can understand the disdain for draws, are we really going to sum up the value of a sport in its scoreline? Isn't it the game itself that makes it entertaining? Imagine if you had one of the all time great defensive battles in American football. After sixty minutes of awesome displays of defensive prowess and entertaining physical battles, it ends with a scoreline of 10-3. One wouldn't really describe that as a bad game (though some offensive-minded folks might consider it boring).
Point being, scoring isn't everything in sports. It certainly isn't an indicator of how exciting a game is. Consider that one of the classic Super Bowls in modern history was the first Patriots/Giants game. While Patriots fans may loathe to remember it, it's hard to describe it as anything other than a classic. The final scoreline was 17-14. Sure, that's 31 total points; it's also only five scores between them. If that were a soccer match, it would have been a 3-2 game, which is not that absurd a result.
Football and basketball are also designed to encourage scoring. The different ways to score, with scores having differing point values, decreases the chances of ties. There's no real way to do that with soccer, just as you can't with hockey or baseball. A score is a point. The excitement with soccer comes from how difficult it is to score - just the same as it is with hockey. And, of course, the difficulty of scoring means that when you do see a goal, it's probably the most awesome and ridiculous thing you've seen.
3. Goals Are Pretty Awesome
Even though scoring might not be as common as it is in any other sport, the goals scored are almost always awesome to watch. Sure, not every goal is particularly thrilling, but more often than not, you see a goal and just think, "Whoa...are you kidding me?"
You get this element in all sports, really, but to a lesser degree. Field goals in football are pretty uninteresting to watch unless there's greater context attached (like the game being on the line). Safeties rarely happen and usually happen because of a penalty. And touchdowns are kind of 50-50. Sure, you get crazy touchdowns like the one to conclude the Cardinals/Steelers Super Bowl of a few years ago, but often you get pretty straight forward scores. Rushes up the middle, quarterback sneaks, quick out passes are all common sources of touchdowns. They're important, but you don't typically watch a run up the middle from two yards away and walk away shaking your head in disbelief.
And it's also not to suggest there aren't crazy baskets made in the NBA. You do get insane three pointers or half-court shots and exciting dunks, but they make so many shots and there are so many points scored that you generally don't think much of any of the points scored. There's no other sport in which scoring is as commonly impressive than with soccer.
4. Rules Are Pretty Simple
Unlike most American sports, the rules to soccer are fairly simple and straight forward. There's the handball, offside, fouls, and the box. Then there is the three substitution rule. Otherwise, that's pretty much it. While officiating might be among the worst (see WHAT I HATE ABOUT SOCCER), soccer has perhaps the smallest "rule book" in any sport.
American football is full to the brim of crazy and overly convoluted rules (as Oakland Raiders fans are aware of). Basketball is pretty straight forward too, but there are a variety of complicated rules (five seconds, three seconds, flagrant/technical fouls, bonus). I will still never understand how there is a defensive three seconds rule.
Even baseball, which doesn't see a lot of action in the game, has a variety of silly rules (see infield fly rule). Soccer is a bit like hockey in that for the sake of keeping the game flowing, there aren't an overabundance of rules. It's easy to follow. When the official blows a whistle or a side judge raises a flag, you know it's one of three things - foul, offside, or handball. That's it!
5. Combination of Athleticism and Skill
To be clear, every sport is a combination of athleticism and skill. A wide receiver going up to grab a pass, a shooting guard taking a quick three pointer from the corner, any baseball player hitting the ball, is going to be impressive to watch. Most people can't do those sorts of things, or at least not under pressure. What tends to get lost in soccer's display of athleticism and skill is that they are running around for literally miles and using their feet to move the ball. This basically means that every time you kick the ball, you're putting yourself slightly out of balance and at risk. Yes, flopping is a concern, but it's easy to ignore the possibility that a lot of these players hitting the deck are doing so because when you're sprinting and trying to kick a soccer ball, it really doesn't take much to knock you on your ass or send you flying. This fact makes it even more impressive when you see such high powered, deadly accurate strikes.
Plus, the amount of control these players have is ridiculous. What they can do to the ball with their feet is nothing short of spectacular to watch.
Also consider that these players don't wear any padding except on their shins. And anyone who's ever played soccer knows that those shin pads don't really stop a lot from hurting. If you get kicked in the shin, it's going to hurt. And frankly, those balls aren't insubstantial. (I'm still never sure how people don't get concussed heading the ball as often as they do.) When I was little, someone rocketed a shot that hit me square in the face. It literally knocked me out for a minute.
To be sure, flopping and diving and trying to sell the foul is definitely a problem with the sport, but I'm not sure people ever give credit to the actual toughness of most of these players. Some theatrics don't negate the actual physicality of the game.
6. High Stakes
This is kind of a double edged sword for soccer. Being the most popular sport in the entire world means that every game has a lot of eyes watching and a lot of pressure. For as big a spectacle as the Super Bowl is, it pales in comparison of the World Cup. The entire country watches the Super Bowl. The entire world watches the World Cup. It's insane. In many ways, the World Cup feels almost like one might expect the Olympics to feel. It's a time for national pride to come out in a relatively safe environment. And for the players and coaches, it's a way to broadcast themselves to elite clubs.
Soccer is also a sport with a notorious history as well. Violence among fans is certainly not unheard of and in poorer nations, people have literally been assassinated as a result of a match. Players, officials, and fans even. It might be the only sport in the world in which for some countries, you actually fear for the players or officials after the game. (See Iraq's national team being tortured in the '90s for losing matches.) This isn't so much a reflection of soccer as much as it is the messed up nature of the world, but it does add more weight to everything.
7. Pride
Sports teams often give us a means to channel our pride. On the league level, it is more closely related to our region. It also cultivates rivalries among cities that - while appearing to divide us - actually unites us in a really strange way.
Still, the significance of a nation's international club gives people a safe place to channel national pride without the political attachments. Consider how put-off people might be if they saw a huge crowd of Germans celebrating their German pride. It might be a bit unfair at this point, but given their history in the past hundred years, many neighbors might grow uncomfortable. International soccer provides a safe place to release that pride, without fear of judgment or reading too much into it. (Although it also helps fuel greater rivalries. Greece and Germany seem to hate each other on the pitch, for example, largely because of politics.)
There's also something to be said about international competition. In the United States, we crown our champions "World Champions." Though our leagues have a growing number of international star players, our American teams don't actually play other national teams. And sure, we're one of the only countries in the world invested in American football, so it's safe to bet that any national team we could come up with would beat any national teams created around the world. Yet when you look at the results of the Baseball World Cup, the United States has only won it four times! Cuba is better at our "national past time" than we are. Sure, we won back to back Baseball World Cups in 2007 and 2009, but that was following a 33 year drought where the best we could muster was second place three times in that span. The US hasn't placed above 4th place in the recently established World Baseball Classic. In 2010, the US basketball team finally reclaimed the top honor in the Basketball World Cup after a fourteen year drought.
Of course, this is a bit deceptive given that a lot of America's most talented athletes refuse to play in international games. It makes sense given their money is coming domestically. Still, this is something that soccer has above most American sports: people actually want to play on their international club. Being actual "world champions" matters. There's a neat mixture of international and club play, and it all matters. And no one claims to be the "world champions" because they won their German or Spanish league title.
8. Promotion and Relegation
Europe has an interesting way of organizing their leagues in that teams can essentially be promoted to a better "division" or demoted to a weaker one depending on their performance. This prevents divisions from becoming brought down by too much lackluster franchise running. (Pretty much the entire Eastern Conference in the NBA should, frankly, have been relegated to a lesser league a long time ago.) Clubs don't typically want to be relegated, so even a bad team with a bad season is encouraged to keep trying to win. Losing out is not beneficial in the way that in America, if you have a bad season, you are encouraged to tank so as to get a better spot in the draft. (American fans seem to embrace the "never give up" idea in sports, until it's clear that you aren't going to win, in which case you should intentionally lose so you get a better draft pick, and they get frustrated at you if you still play to win.)
Promotion and relegation is not a perfect system. And indeed, there are often a number of financial hardships facing teams that are relegated (further incentive to play to win and avoid relegation). Still, it can't be any worse than many American leagues, where at some point, intentionally tanking is seen as beneficial. And then, of course, you get persistently poorly run teams like the Cleveland Browns or Oakland Raiders hanging around just filling space on the schedule.
WHAT I HATE ABOUT SOCCER:
1. Stoppage Time
Stoppage Time is one of those elements in an almost self-destructively traditional sport. Soccer fans are much like baseball fans in that any proposed changes are met with almost outright disdain. Perhaps no element of the game gets more ire from casual fans, with criticism being met almost two-fold from traditionalists, than Stoppage Time.
Soccer is a ninety minute game split into two, forty-five minute halves. Americans often roll their eyes at the fact the clock runs up instead of down, but that is kind of silly. A clock running up to fifteen minutes is no different than running down to zero. The big hold up with many people though is that when the clock reaches the forty-five minute or ninety minute mark, the game continues. The officials add a seemingly random amount of time back onto the clock. Keeping the clock running means that the matches end at roughly the same time. Rarely does a match take longer than two hours (something else fundamentally different from American sports where we're used to planning our entire afternoon or evening around a game).
But the problem is that Stoppage Time makes no sense and often becomes frustrating. There's no rhyme or reason to it, other than that it usually lasts between one and six minutes. Supposedly, the time is added back on to make up for the time wasted from injuries, goals, and substitutions made throughout the half. The theory goes, Stoppage Time keeps teams and players honest because if they flop and fake injuries or stay down for longer to stop play or take longer on free/goal/corner kicks, that time comes back on Stoppage Time.
The problem, of course, is that it doesn't. Stoppage Time has never and will never match the time wasting done in a half. Taking four full soccer matches available online, I edited each match to reflect a clock that stops when the ball is dead and not in play (similar to how it works with basketball). Almost always, the ball is only in play for thirty to thirty-five minutes. That means that on the best of days, the ball is live 80% of a given half. The biggest discrepancy in a half that I found was in a 2012 match up between Germany and Belgium. In the first half, there were no injuries and no substitutions, but there were two goals scored. One minute of extra time was added. Yet in the 46 minutes of the first half, the ball was only "live" for a total of 30 minutes (with an error margin of 10 seconds in either direction). That means almost an entire third of the half was just time waster. Further evidence that Stoppage Time is completely random: the two goals alone killed about two minutes and fifteen seconds off the game clock. Yet only one minute was tacked on at the end.
The second half wasn't much different. There were several injuries that took up to a minute each to sort out, four substitutions, and two goals. Three minutes were tacked on to the end. In the second half, the ball was in play for a total of 33 minutes and 55 seconds (error margin of 15 seconds in either direction). And the weird thing is, even that is a bit deceptive since Germany had taken a 2-0 lead early in the game and had resolved to kill clock with a brutal possession game. When breaking down the biggest time wasters of the game, goal kicks and goals scored were easily the most time consuming dead-ball events.
And this is absolutely the norm. If the argument is that Stoppage Time keeps players honest and prevents them from killing time, then the argument is extremely flawed. In reality, taking extra time for throw ins, corner kicks, goal kicks, substitutions, and "injuries" is always beneficial for a team in the lead because that time is almost guaranteed to disappear. Relying on Stoppage Time to prevent time wasting is hardly as effective as stopping the clock.
Purists will then argue that stopping the clock will break up the flow of the game. This argument, of course, makes no real sense either. The flow of the game is already being broken up by time wasting! Players already stay down longer to stop the flow of the game. Goalies take extra time on goal kicks, free kicks either happen very quickly or take forever to set up. The game is already chopped up with dead ball things. Stopping the clock does nothing to break up the flow of the game. It merely creates a more accurate means of time keeping and means that you actually play the amount of soccer intended.
I can appreciate the concern that stopping the clock might open the doors to commercial breaks and TV time outs, but soccer is totally different from basketball and American football in the way that stopping the clock doesn't stop the game. It wouldn't create commercial breaks (unless, perhaps, in the case of major, time-consuming injuries). This seems like a legitimate concern, but one that is slightly misplaced.
The 2014 World Cup has created a strange new argument. We've seen an almost absurd number of Stoppage Time goals this year. The argument goes something along the lines of, "well, if you didn't have Stoppage Time, you wouldn't get this:"
A classic and iconic moment in US Soccer history, to be sure. And, of course, it happened in the 91st minute - Stoppage Time. But here's the thing: the time in Stoppage Time doesn't disappear if you stop the clock. These late, last gasp goals happen if you stop the clock! If you consider that almost 20% of any given half is literally just time wasting, then those two, three, four minutes of Stoppage Time would just be a part of that.
Bottom line: there's absolutely no real reason that Stoppage Time is still a thing except for the traditionalists who fear change (and, perhaps, efficiency). It absolutely does not prevent teams from killing time. There's no reason not to kill time if you've got the lead. Stay down an extra minute! Odds are extremely favorable that that minute isn't coming back. However, Stoppage Time is confusing, arbitrary, and random. And that is quite a turnoff.
2. Flopping
Soccer fans are fast growing tired of hearing casual fans (and non-fans) complain about flopping in the sport. "Flopping" (or more affectionately referred to as "diving") is actually existent in all sports. Any Celtics fan from the last decade is more than familiar with Paul Pierce's tendency to flail around to draw a foul and get to the line instead of actually playing the game. And in the NFL, wide receivers will do much to sell a pass interference call.
However, it is actually especially problematic in soccer. Flopping happens a lot. To be fair to the players, most casual (and non) fans don't or can't appreciate the actual agony felt in many of those collisions. Anyone who has played soccer knows that shin pads do little to actually prevent pain. And when you're sprinting around for an hour and a half, it doesn't take much to knock you over. Nor does it take much to make you sore.
But then you see crap like this:
Again, every sport has more than its share of theatrics, but against Mexico, Arjen Robben had more flops than shots on goal. And in the end, it paid off. Sure, did he get legitimately fouled in the box earlier in the game that got missed? Yeah. But his biggest flop of the entire game at the end of the second half drew a penalty in the box for the game winner. His flop literally won the game for Holland.
Before Robben's classic game full of flops, you can look back at the opening of the 2014 World Cup in which Neymar's flop inside the penalty box drew a foul call from the official, and it tied the game up. This was also one of the most egregious flops of the entire tournament. It's one thing to have all the theatrics of rolling around in agony; it's another to have athletes literally give up on a play, playing for a call instead of the ball. Again, this happens in all sports, but it does seem to happen a lot in soccer. In fact, the most successful international clubs (namely in South America and Europe) get nearly twice as many fouls called in their favor than anyone else in the world. It's so obviously a problem that the New York Times even published an article that suggest the US doesn't flop enough!
What's funny is that it's primarily a problem in the men's game. One study found that in men's soccer, more than eleven injuries occur, with an average of over seven minutes of time wasting. The women's games, by comparison, average just under six injuries per game with just a couple minutes of time wasting. (This is actually one of the reasons I actually sometimes prefer women's soccer.)
I understand that soccer fans hate hearing about the diving problem, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to deny that it isn't a big problem. Every sports has theatrics.
Even the NFL has a bit of a problem with theatrics.
It's hard to tell if soccer ultimately has a worse case of the flops than the NBA or NFL, but one of the differences is that flopping does seem to be more successful in soccer than those other sports. Flopping in the NBA - like most calls in the NBA - depend on your star power and reputation. LeBron James, for example, gets away with a lot of flops. Chris Paul does not, because he has a reputation as a flopper so officials are already looking for it. In the NFL, flopping by kickers and punters is supposed to be a penalty itself, but it's never called and if everyone were honest, they are probably coached to do so.
Though counting "flops" in any game of any sport is an extremely time consuming endeavor and thus, is difficult to determine whether there are more flops in a particular sport, it does feel like not only does soccer suffer more, they're also more beneficial. FIFA - like the NFL - is supposed to prohibit the behavior. Diving is itself punishable by a yellow card. In most occasions though, the "simulation" actually results in a foul or card for the opposing player. In 2009, UEFA suspended Eduardo da Silva for two games after video replay showed him flopping on a play that, in the game, netted him a penalty kick. MLS has also implemented post-game fines for players flopping. Ultimately though, these efforts don't appear to really be bucking the trend (though they should still exist - it would be terrible if a player was suspended on a second yellow card he got for contact with a flopping player).
Part of the problem is that players understand that theatrics will eventually pay off. However, smart soccer players only account for part of the problem:
3. Officiating
The other part of the problem is that FIFA officiating is notoriously awful. The rules might be simple, but it also leaves a lot of room for judgment. When watching more and more soccer matches, it's easy to realize that no one really knows what constitutes a foul. Officials in every sport call games differently. There's very little consistent in games that largely rely on judgment calls. Soccer doesn't just rely on judgment calls; it also does little to make life easier for the official.
Where American football is constantly trying to figure out how to officiate games more efficiently - instant reply, re-aligning refs, having multiple refs on the field - soccer is content to just let basically one guy do everything. There is one side judge on each half of the field who is responsible for calling offside and perhaps fouls close to them. The problem though is that they are stationed on just one side of the field. It's often difficult to see plays happening all the way on the other side of the field. Then, there's the time keeper (who, as we discussed earlier, just makes stuff up).
Finally, there is the main official - the only one on the field. There might not be a group of referees as fit as soccer officials. They have to do almost as much running as the players! But that's also part of the problem. Because the game can often move very quickly and the official has to keep up, and because the field is so large and there are so many players on it, the officials seem to call games based on reactions rather than what they actually saw. It's a lot of "I think I saw."
One solution might be to keep one official on the field and then having two officials - one on each end by the goals - responsible for just one half of the pitch. This would make it easier to officiate on fast counter attacks, or just help out given how many players are on the field at one time. Soccer has added the tennis replay technology for goals, so see if a ball crosses the line in really close situations. This is obviously a great addition, and it's strange that it took so long to implement. Still, officiating in soccer is easily some of the worst and most horrendously inconsistent in all of sports. Adding a couple of more officials could help that. If the argument against it is that it will get confusing, I'd just point out that in the NBA, multiple officials call fouls and things. There's no reason it can't apply to soccer as well.
Or, they could just put two linesman on opposite sides of the field with their flags. Side judges already make calls like offside, foul, and handball. More eyes on the field of play haven't necessarily helped the NFL - where officials often miss the initial action and only look at an area once a player hits the deck (which is strange because it means officials are making calls based on what they think happened rather than what they actually saw ) - but it certainly can't hurt.
4. Penalty Kicks
Penalty kicks are another point of contention between new fans and purists. Personally, I hate them as a game decider, but understand their significance in the game itself. However, something one can take away from this year's World Cup is how PKs are often rewarded in a way that isn't in the spirit of the rule. The idea of the penalty box is to prevent defending players from committing egregious fouls as attacking players zero in on goal. It makes sense. It's kind of like how in American football, pass interference is such a big call to prevent defensive players from blatantly taking out the receivers when they can. It keeps defenders honest.
The insanely high rate of PK conversions reinforces this concept. It varies very slightly by league, but PKs are converted upward to 80% of the time. The rules surrounding PKs also make things extremely favorable for the kicker. For starters, the ball is placed so close to the goal that a keeper has only a half second to react. The keeper is also not allowed to move forward off the goal line, even though the kicker can start and stop his approach on the ball at will (see Neymar).
The problem is that many fouls inside the box are not really egregious enough to merit a PK. It's not to say fouls don't happen in the box that affect the play, of course. But look at that Robben play again (in the "flop" section). If you watched that play live, it's impossible to say if that were developing into anything. Mexico's defense was pretty good that day, and either way, you can't say for sure that that play was going to end in a goal even if he were legitimately fouled (which he wasn't). Even his play earlier in the game in which he was actually fouled in the box to a no-call, you can't say for sure he was going to score. And it wasn't the most egregious of fouls.
Point being, to aware a PK on most of these fouls seems like overkill. Awarding a PK is almost the exact same thing as awarding a goal. Tell me if most of those fouls, even if totally legit, merit a goal as a punishment? The way PKs are often awarded simply by "being in the box" instead of what is actually happening on the play makes for what is easily the harshest penalty in all of sports. The only thing kind of like it is the NFL's pass interference in the endzone. If you chuck a ball into the endzone from your own 40-yard line and the refs perceive contact on a receiver in the endzone, the ball gets placed at the 1-yard line. That's literally a 59 yard penalty, and barring a turnover, is practically guaranteed to result in points. It's one of those things where the spirit of the rule is often ignored. Sure, in neither case are points absolutely guaranteed. I don't have statistics on how often PI calls in the endzone result in points (either a touchdown or a field goal), but it's safe to assume that it's a pretty high percentage as well.
The other problem is the overtime rules for soccer. For some reason, they abandoned the much superior "Golden Goal" rule, which is quite simply first-to-score wins. And if no one has scored after thirty minutes, it goes to PKs. PKs are a terrible way to decide the outcome of a game. It's almost like if an NFL game were still tied, they lined kickers up at the 40-yard line and had them kick until someone misses. Or if the NBA decided a game by having players go through free throws until one team misses. Sure, it's exciting and the build up is thrilling. As much as I hate PKs as a way to end a game, even I can admit that there is nothing more tense than penalty kicks. Even if the team I'm rooting for wins (as Costa Rico did against Greece), I still feel a little let down that they took a great game and reduced it to chance and guess work.
Perhaps I wouldn't mind PKs so much if they altered the rules from in-game PK rules. For example, what about letting the goal keeper move forward when the player begins his approach to the ball? Guys like Neymar do a strange stutter step thing, rushing, then stopping, then rushing again before making the kick. It's obviously a ploy to try and draw the goal keeper off the line so in the rare circumstance he miss a kick, he gets a do-over. Wouldn't it be more fair and exciting if the goal keeper got to rush the player once he begins his approach? It'd still be an advantage for the kicker, but at least the goal keeper can actually have a real shot at saving it, rather than seeing if they guess correctly, get lucky, or the kicking player cracks under the pressure and misses (which is actually more common than a keeper saving it, especially if you're an English player).
What's kind of funny, by the way, is that goal keepers actually increase their chances of saving it if they don't move much instead of diving in one direction or the other. The kicks are so close and happen so quickly that even guessing correctly still means the kick is likely to go in. Yet the perception is that if a keeper - even realizing that his chances are increased by not moving far - doesn't move, fans will think he didn't try. Often times, trying to stop a PK increases the likelihood of the PK going in. It's this sort of "illusion of effort." Goalies even admit that even if a kick goes right down the middle and they dove to one side and it goes in, they feel worse if they don't dive to the sides.
I don't disagree that PKs are a better alternative to "keep playing until someone wins at the end of a period" idea. After 30 minutes of overtime, those players are dead tired and their legs are jelly. They've got nothing left. The argument then goes that for player safety and welfare, it should go to PKs instead of another period. This is a fair argument, of course, provided you ignore that they specifically abandoned the Golden Goal rule, which means that players must play an extra 30 minutes even if they score a goal first. We saw this twice this week. After 90 minutes of a standstill, Germany scored in the first two minutes of Extra Time against Algeria. This meant that they had to play 28 more minutes for the same result as a Golden Goal scenario (Germany ultimately won 2-1). This also happened for Belgium, who after being stopped by Tim Howard for 90 minutes, scored in the first few minutes of Extra Time against the US in a game that also ended with the same result as Golden Goal rules. (I'd be curious to find out what percentage of games that go to Extra Time are won by teams that score first. My guess is that they more often than not win.) And really, what exactly is wrong with Golden Goal rules to begin with? As a US fan, I can appreciate having had that opportunity to tie it back up again, but at the same time, if we're going to give up a goal in under three minutes of Extra Time, we deserved to lose.
Penalty Kicks just leave a bad taste in the mouth of what was otherwise a great game. It's a bad way to decide a game, and in-game PK calls are often a ridiculous reward for a foul that more often than not wasn't worth a goal. It's not called in the spirit of the rule. Especially given how bad the officiating is and how bad the flopping situation is.
Overall, soccer is one of the great sports of the world. It's a shame it has such a traditional, purist fan base, because there is much that could be improved upon. Still, flaws and all, it's a growing sport in the US and only a matter of time before it finally breaks through the cusp.
Still, my argument is not that soccer is the most entertaining or best sport in the world. If you find it boring to watch, nothing is going to convince you that it isn't. While I can respect baseball, you'll never convince me that it's exciting (or even entertaining, really). So I get it. I'm just making the case that some of the arguments against soccer are rather unfair. It's more about respecting the game even if you don't like it. A lot of the complaints I hear from American sports fans often makes me wonder what everyone's idea of "sport" really is. I love soccer, and I don't think there's a better sporting event in the world than the World Cup. Of course, I still think the sport has much to improve on.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Thoughts on a Dominant UConn
The following thoughts are a bit delayed, obviously, but still in the forefront of my brain. As has been much celebrated, the UConn Huskies men's basketball team won their fourth NCAA title, defeating Kentucky in a relatively close and low scoring game. Naturally, they get all the glory of winning the national title. They get the Sports Illustrated cover and most of the press and media reporting. Not unnoticed, but certainly unheralded by comparison, the UConn women's basketball team also won the NCAA women's title for the ninth time. It's the second time in a decade that both titles went to the same school. Both times, it was UConn (2004 and 2014).
Much can be said about the UConn men's program and how unlikely their title run might have seemed. The men's tournament is usually filled with more upsets, more parity, more uncertainty, more chaos! To put things in perspective, according to Yahoo Sports, of the millions of brackets filled out this year, only about 1% had UConn in the Final Four alone, never mind in and winning the final. Similarly, only 2.3% picked the losing Kentucky to be in the Final Four as well. This speaks to the unpredictable nature of the NCAA men's tournament. To some degree, it certainly is madness in March. Not to the fullest, of course. Of the sixty four teams entering the tournament, one can reasonably assume about forty to fifty of those teams aren't really going to win. They might advance further than expected, but it isn't very often that a truly small or unlikely team will go far. It's generally considered a success for an underdog to make it to the Sweet 16, meaning those 11-15 seeds that occasionally advance win all of two games before being unceremoniously knocked out by the truly competitive teams.
From this standpoint, it makes sense on a vague level, why the men's tournament draws more attention. It appears to be more competitive. Sports fans are a bit strange sometimes. We generally love to see dominant players and teams, but if they become too successful, we're quick to hate them. People generally dislike those teams that seem to have a stranglehold on the sport. Take, for instance, the New York Yankees, who won four World Series in the span of five years in the late '90s. The Yankees reputation quite literally precedes them though, as most of their twenty-seven pennants occurred well before most Yankees haters were even born. They've gone through stretches winning three in a row, four in a row, and from 1949 to 1953, they won five in a row! It's been a long time since the Yankees had that kind of grip on the Major Leagues, however. Similarly, the Boston Celtics won eleven NBA championships in the span of thirteen years from 1957 to 1969. They only missed the finals once in 1967 and lost the finals in 1958. The hate for the Celtics has largely vanished with their falling off into a state of disarray for the greater part of the last two decades.
There have been a few sports dynasties in recent years. No team in the salary cap era of the NFL has ever been as successful as the New England Patriots, appearing in five Super Bowls while winning three, making the playoffs in twelve of the past fourteen years, competing in eight AFC championship games, and posting just one losing season in the past fifteen years (notably, Bill Belichick's first year). Still, though they clearly own the AFC East division, they haven't quite owned the NFL. Since winning their last Super Bowl in 2004, they haven't won it since. That's nearly a decade without a championship win.
Another modern age dynasty from a different sport would be the Los Angeles Lakers, who renewed their dominant role in the NBA after years of lackluster seasons. In the eleven years from 2000 to 2010, they won five NBA titles while appearing in an additional two (read: they went to the finals seven out of eleven times). The Spurs might have been considered something of a dynasty for a bit their in the early aughts, but they lacked the staying power that the Lakers had. Certainly if one were to select a team to be the dynasty of the aughts in the NBA, there's no question it's the Lakers.
What impresses me the most about the UConn women's usually quiet ride to the title is the complete dominance with which they hold over the competition. Sure, the women's tournament is often a bit more predictable than the men's, but it's just as worthy to watch given UConn's pure superiority. If a fan watches sports to watch the best, there are few better in modern sports than the UConn women's team. Consider that of the past fifteen tournaments, UConn has come out on top eight times (more than half of them). It's more than that though. Most of the games weren't even close. In the past six years, UConn has won four championships in blowout fashions. Sure, one game was won by six points, but the women won four games by a total of 82 points (winning by an average of 20 points per game).
The competition hasn't been horrible either. This year, UConn blew out a very good Notre Dame squad that was 37-0 on the season and a similarly ranked one-seed. Thing is, no one was even in the same ballpark as UConn. They won their six tournament games by a total margin of 154 points, beating opponents by an average of 25.7 points per game! You don't see that kind of dominance anywhere else, including the men's tournament.
I know few take women's sports seriously for some reason or another. I understand that many find women's basketball to be something of a joke. Still, in all of sports, few programs have been as dominating as the UConn women's basketball team. If you want to see the best of the best, you watch UConn women's team every year. They don't win every year, but they are as close to owning the competition as any sports organization on any level.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Super Bowl Thoughts and Predictions.
Well, it's that time. The Super Bowl is around the corner and everyone is making their predictions. So here are some thoughts and predictions on the upcoming Super Bowl, both in terms of the actual game and its implications. Here are some of the stories going into it:
Peyton Manning's Legacy:
Would winning this second Super Bowl automatically make him the greatest quarterback of all-time? What does it do to his legacy if he loses? Does just making it to three Super Bowls already make him the greatest? And more importantly, as a Patriots fan, but Richard Sherman hater, do I even want either of these teams to win?
Here's the thing about Manning's legacy: it's pretty much set in stone at this point. Win or lose, he's always going to be considered a top five quarterback all-time. And, of course, the greatest of all time debate is never going to have a clear cut winner. It's entirely subjective. If the reason people still don't rank Tom Brady over Joe Montana is that Brady has lost two of his five Super Bowls while Montana won all four of his, then how can Manning be placed above Montana going two for three himself? He's still lost a Super Bowl, and didn't even appear in as many as Montana (and only appeared in about half as many as Brady).
Sports fans tend to be all about the "now," but I'm not sure you can really erase the past, especially in regards to a player's "legacy." What about the fact that Peyton Manning didn't even make the Super Bowl until almost a full decade into his career? Three Super Bowl appearances will always be impressive. It's less impressive when considering this is three in the span of sixteen years (fifteen years as a starter, minus the injured year). That's 20% of his seasons as a starter in the NFL. If Brett Favre has taught us anything, it's just how difficult it is to even get to the Super Bowl, going to two Super Bowls early in his career, then only even sniffing the NFC Championship a couple of times for the remainder of his career. (By comparison, Tom Brady has been to five Super Bowls in the span of twelve years as a starter - minus the injured year- meaning he's been to 41% of the Super Bowls available to him as a starter. Just saying.)
I'm also one of these weird sports fans who doesn't feel that championships mean everything. When looking at a player's legacy, you have to also use the regular season. You can't just ignore certain aspects of his career. Shoot, even as a Patriots fan and as someone who thinks Tom Brady is arguably the greatest ever, you can't just ignore his history of shaky play in the post season. With Brett Favre, you can't just ignore the entire second half of his career. And similarly, you can't just ignore Peyton Manning's first decade in the league. Manning has steadily gotten better in the post season as the years went by, but he's still someone that has traditionally looked much better in the regular season than in the post season.
Yes, Manning is having perhaps his best post season to date. And that bears keeping in mind too! But does one good post season suddenly override years and years and years of underperforming in the post season? If we're talking about his overall legacy, it can't. The legacy isn't just "what you did last." It's everything.
Win or lose, to my mind Peyton Manning is clearly a top five quarterback in the history of the league. I wouldn't put him above Tom Brady or Joe Montana just because he wins a second ring. It helps his case, especially against a stout defense like the Seahawks. I don't see this really changing his legacy that much though unless he comes out flat, throws two or three interceptions, and loses big time as a result. If he plays horribly in the Super Bowl and loses his second, it'll be hard to shake the idea of Manning being a great regular season quarterback who just couldn't keep it going into the post season.
I would just address this argument pre-emptively: "Well, Peyton Manning has taken two different teams to the Super Bowl! That's far more impressive than taking the same team over and over again." This is an argument many have been making to put Manning in his "rightful" spot above Tom Brady. I think this argument is extremely flawed and is a disservice to both the Patriots and this year's Broncos team. First of all, the "two teams" argument is almost entirely arbitrary. When you really look at the make-up of this Broncos team, does it really look that different from the make-up of his Colts teams in years past? Prolific offense? Check. At least one really, really good wide out? Check. A great slot receiver? Check. An amazing offensive line? Check. A somewhat pedestrian defense? Check. Honestly, the Denver Broncos could very well be the Indianapolis Colts. It's built almost exactly the same way as Manning's Colts were. There is definitely something to be said about Manning going to three Super Bowls under three different head coaches! That's definitely something people can use to knock Brady a bit. For all of the different offensive coordinators Brady's had, he's only ever had Bill Belichick.
Still, the Patriots team is built entirely differently from years past. Almost every year is dramatically different in terms of offensive schemes and personnel. The Patriots teams that Tom Brady has taken to the post season since 2004 have been extremely different. By all means, the 2011 Super Bowl run as well was an entirely different team on both sides of the ball. Just because it's the same uniform doesn't mean it's the same team. When these guys like Brady and Manning start pushing 15, 20 years in their career? Any Super Bowl they make is going to be with a very different team.
Let's also not forget that the Broncos team Manning inherited was not a bad team. They went 8-8 and made the playoffs the year before Manning's arrival. They already had a number of offensive weapons in place. The defense was a little better before Manning, but that team's only missing ingredient was a quarterback. Of course the Broncos are going to look much, much better with Peyton Manning under center than Tim Tebow. It's not like Manning went to the Oakland Raiders or the Dallas Cowboys. He went to a good team that had a good system in place and just needed that one part. Manning's greatness is that he elevated that team, but he didn't make it himself and himself alone.
Of course, I might be rooting for Manning here, if only because I do want to see Wes Welker get a ring. Patriots fans really lay down their hate of Welker these days, but he's been a solid receiver and a fun guy to follow. He deserves a ring (even though I would prefer it have been with the Pats). And frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing Peyton Manning get another ring too, if only so people shut up about Eli being better. (One more ring doesn't remove ten years of mediocre - at best - play.)
Richard Sherman:
What's easy to forget coming into this Super Bowl is that Richard Sherman might not even be Seattle's best defensive back! Free safety Earl Thomas has very quietly been performing at a very high level. Thomas is every bit as critical to the Legion of Boom as Sherman, and yet no one is talking about him (perhaps because Thomas doesn't talk about himself in the same way as Sherman does).
Let's not get the wrong idea here: Richard Sherman is certainly one of the best cornerbacks in the league. The (unfortunate) reality is that he can say anything he wants because he more often than not, backs it up. This, of course, doesn't suggest that you can't beat Sherman. He got torched on a number of plays in last year's playoff games (something no one has ever addressed...) But the guy more or less always backs up the talk (even if he only talks when they're ahead, or when he wants to come up with an excuse as to why he got beat or they lost).
Now, I'll just touch a little bit on this: I initially hated Richard Sherman. And I still do, but not as much as I did before. I'm all for trash talking. In fact, I actually have been enjoying a number of the things he's been saying in the lead up to the Super Bowl. He's got a little back and forth going with the Broncos players (including Manning). It seems like it's in good fun. That's the key to what I perceive as acceptable trash talking. I'm all for this kind of stuff. I'm all for trash talking on the field to try and get in your opponent's head. And certainly, Sherman carries a level of honesty that is actually kind of refreshing from the tight-lipped Patriot Way many fans are accustomed to. Still, I do believe in sportsmanship. When you make a play, celebrate with your team. Don't go and taunt the other team. Don't go on television and freak out about how great you are and how crappy another player is (especially when it was another player - Colin Kaepernick - who cost them the game, not Michael Crabtree).
Richard Sherman has proven to be just as sore a winner as he is a loser. If this is what sports allows as perfectly acceptable, I have to wonder what we're doing here. If it's all ok because the only thing that matters is winning, then how is sports not the most self-serving and self-important institution in the history of mankind? And like it or not, every single one of these professional athletes is a role model. That's why it's so frustrating that the league just gives their players a slap on the wrist. (See Marshawn Lynch - who I really like - but has been arrested for a DUI and had virtually no consequences from the league.)
And of course, let's not forget that Richard Sherman was caught for using performance-enhancing drugs a few years ago and got off - not because it was proven he didn't use them, but because of a legal technicality saying the sample wasn't entirely handled correctly. By all means, Sherman tested positive for PEDs and somehow no one cares because of a technicality. (Meanwhile, Spygate remains the most blown out of proportion "cheating" scandal in the history of sports...)
Sherman has been classless on the field. It's frustrating to hear him speak later in the week, when he's more collected and obviously very intelligent. In the aftermath of his strange and absurd rant post-game against San Francisco, he later apologized and told kids that they shouldn't taunt other players and he regretted his actions. I mean, I get that whole "heat of the moment" argument, but why is Richard Sherman the only player in the league who has done that? You don't think all those New England players are competitors too? Shoot. Tom Brady's post-game conferences this year have shown how pissed he gets when he loses, but you still never ever see him make any comments putting down other players (or even the other team!)
He seems very much that guy that you totally love when he's on your team, but when he's not, you totally hate him. I certainly appreciate the freshness he's brought to this week's media blitz. It's more interesting than a Patriots/Giants Super Bowl where everyone is showing too much respect to each other to the point where it seems borderline fake. Still, if I were a Seattle fan, I'd be a little bit worried. We've seen this before: players who are so cocky to the point where they seem to care more about themselves than the team. At first it seems fine, but over time those players start to pick the team apart.
Offense vs. Defense
And of course, we have another instance of a prolific offense facing off against a stout defense. Peyton Manning and company shattered records and presumably go into the Super Bowl as favorites (probably in the same way that the Patriots were favorites in 2011, actually - in that Vegas put them as favorites, but most football analysts picked the Giants). I suspect it's the same deal. Already, I've seen most analysts pick the Seahawks. Still, Denver seems to be the favorites.
My thought is just that we've seen this before. In 2001, we saw the defensive minded Patriots take on the Greatest Show on Turf and hold the best offense in the league to 17 points. We saw it again in 2002 with the defensively focused Buccaneers beating the last great Raiders offense. We saw it with the team that was previously the most prolific offense in NFL history! The New York Giants held the record breaking Patriots offense to just 14 points! They did it again in 2011, holding one of the best offenses in the league to just 17 points. You could even argue that the Saints did it to the Colts in 2009. Though not a great defense, the Saints ballhawking defense peaked just in time for the playoffs. They held Arizona to just 14 points in the Divisional Round, then held the vaunted Manning offense to just 17 points in the Super Bowl.
When it comes to offense versus defense Super Bowls, the stats heavily favor the defense.
Cold Weather
It sounds like this cold weather Super Bowl won't be so terrible after all. The forecast shows no inclement weather and the temperatures to be around 30 degrees. Fans and analysts (and presumably players) have sighed a little relief. I still don't get it. Apparently, our high school and college football teams can play in 4 degree weather, but not professional athletes?
And don't give me that nonsense about "it impacts the game." While that's true, does it not impact both teams? It's not like it affects just one team - like bad officiating impacted Carolina. (For the record, I think San Fran wins that game regardless, but that was one of the most lopsided officiating jobs I've seen in years, with a number of terrible, terrible calls and noncalls blatantly aided the 49ers.) Maybe I'm the only person who doesn't want to just always watch football played in these stale, safe, and artificial environments. Weather should be a factor!
If anything, this couldn't be more well set up for Peyton Manning to further pad his legacy. An outdoor playoff game (where he's traditionally struggled), in the cold (when he's traditionally struggled)? He wins now, no one would ever make that argument again. Further, are the Broncos or Seahawks really that great if they need warm weather and artificial conditions to win a Super Bowl? Everyone talks about how unfair a cold weather Super Bowl would be for a team built in warm weather, but why does the opposite never apply? What about warm weather Super Bowls that feature teams built for colder climates?
Listen, I'm not saying we always play Super Bowls in cold weather, but c'mon. It can't just be in Texas, Florida, California, and Louisiana every year. Bring some diversity to it! OH NO! THEY MIGHT HAVE TO PLAY IN SNOW!??!? Bologna. This is football.
Predictions:
I might be rooting a bit for the Broncos, but otherwise I have no real investment in this game. I do see it going to the Seattle Seahawks with a bit of a lopsided score. I see it being 31-16 with Marshawn Lynch the MVP. I think Manning throws two interceptions, with Lynch slowly getting stronger over time. I know, I know. "The most prolific offense only scores one, maybe two touchdowns? Really?" Yeah. I do think that. And I think that because that's exactly what happened last time the most prolific offense went up against a great defense. Of course, the Broncos offensive line is better than the '07 Patriots line. And the Seahawks pass rush isn't as good as the '07 Giants rush. But I don't see Manning being able to rely on the running game. He'll only be able to do so much with short ins and outs.
I see Manning's stats being something like 24-40 for 290 yards with 1 TD and 2 INTs. One of the backs might fumble as well.
Peyton Manning's Legacy:
Would winning this second Super Bowl automatically make him the greatest quarterback of all-time? What does it do to his legacy if he loses? Does just making it to three Super Bowls already make him the greatest? And more importantly, as a Patriots fan, but Richard Sherman hater, do I even want either of these teams to win?
Here's the thing about Manning's legacy: it's pretty much set in stone at this point. Win or lose, he's always going to be considered a top five quarterback all-time. And, of course, the greatest of all time debate is never going to have a clear cut winner. It's entirely subjective. If the reason people still don't rank Tom Brady over Joe Montana is that Brady has lost two of his five Super Bowls while Montana won all four of his, then how can Manning be placed above Montana going two for three himself? He's still lost a Super Bowl, and didn't even appear in as many as Montana (and only appeared in about half as many as Brady).
Sports fans tend to be all about the "now," but I'm not sure you can really erase the past, especially in regards to a player's "legacy." What about the fact that Peyton Manning didn't even make the Super Bowl until almost a full decade into his career? Three Super Bowl appearances will always be impressive. It's less impressive when considering this is three in the span of sixteen years (fifteen years as a starter, minus the injured year). That's 20% of his seasons as a starter in the NFL. If Brett Favre has taught us anything, it's just how difficult it is to even get to the Super Bowl, going to two Super Bowls early in his career, then only even sniffing the NFC Championship a couple of times for the remainder of his career. (By comparison, Tom Brady has been to five Super Bowls in the span of twelve years as a starter - minus the injured year- meaning he's been to 41% of the Super Bowls available to him as a starter. Just saying.)
I'm also one of these weird sports fans who doesn't feel that championships mean everything. When looking at a player's legacy, you have to also use the regular season. You can't just ignore certain aspects of his career. Shoot, even as a Patriots fan and as someone who thinks Tom Brady is arguably the greatest ever, you can't just ignore his history of shaky play in the post season. With Brett Favre, you can't just ignore the entire second half of his career. And similarly, you can't just ignore Peyton Manning's first decade in the league. Manning has steadily gotten better in the post season as the years went by, but he's still someone that has traditionally looked much better in the regular season than in the post season.
Yes, Manning is having perhaps his best post season to date. And that bears keeping in mind too! But does one good post season suddenly override years and years and years of underperforming in the post season? If we're talking about his overall legacy, it can't. The legacy isn't just "what you did last." It's everything.
Win or lose, to my mind Peyton Manning is clearly a top five quarterback in the history of the league. I wouldn't put him above Tom Brady or Joe Montana just because he wins a second ring. It helps his case, especially against a stout defense like the Seahawks. I don't see this really changing his legacy that much though unless he comes out flat, throws two or three interceptions, and loses big time as a result. If he plays horribly in the Super Bowl and loses his second, it'll be hard to shake the idea of Manning being a great regular season quarterback who just couldn't keep it going into the post season.
I would just address this argument pre-emptively: "Well, Peyton Manning has taken two different teams to the Super Bowl! That's far more impressive than taking the same team over and over again." This is an argument many have been making to put Manning in his "rightful" spot above Tom Brady. I think this argument is extremely flawed and is a disservice to both the Patriots and this year's Broncos team. First of all, the "two teams" argument is almost entirely arbitrary. When you really look at the make-up of this Broncos team, does it really look that different from the make-up of his Colts teams in years past? Prolific offense? Check. At least one really, really good wide out? Check. A great slot receiver? Check. An amazing offensive line? Check. A somewhat pedestrian defense? Check. Honestly, the Denver Broncos could very well be the Indianapolis Colts. It's built almost exactly the same way as Manning's Colts were. There is definitely something to be said about Manning going to three Super Bowls under three different head coaches! That's definitely something people can use to knock Brady a bit. For all of the different offensive coordinators Brady's had, he's only ever had Bill Belichick.
Still, the Patriots team is built entirely differently from years past. Almost every year is dramatically different in terms of offensive schemes and personnel. The Patriots teams that Tom Brady has taken to the post season since 2004 have been extremely different. By all means, the 2011 Super Bowl run as well was an entirely different team on both sides of the ball. Just because it's the same uniform doesn't mean it's the same team. When these guys like Brady and Manning start pushing 15, 20 years in their career? Any Super Bowl they make is going to be with a very different team.
Let's also not forget that the Broncos team Manning inherited was not a bad team. They went 8-8 and made the playoffs the year before Manning's arrival. They already had a number of offensive weapons in place. The defense was a little better before Manning, but that team's only missing ingredient was a quarterback. Of course the Broncos are going to look much, much better with Peyton Manning under center than Tim Tebow. It's not like Manning went to the Oakland Raiders or the Dallas Cowboys. He went to a good team that had a good system in place and just needed that one part. Manning's greatness is that he elevated that team, but he didn't make it himself and himself alone.
Of course, I might be rooting for Manning here, if only because I do want to see Wes Welker get a ring. Patriots fans really lay down their hate of Welker these days, but he's been a solid receiver and a fun guy to follow. He deserves a ring (even though I would prefer it have been with the Pats). And frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing Peyton Manning get another ring too, if only so people shut up about Eli being better. (One more ring doesn't remove ten years of mediocre - at best - play.)
Richard Sherman:
What's easy to forget coming into this Super Bowl is that Richard Sherman might not even be Seattle's best defensive back! Free safety Earl Thomas has very quietly been performing at a very high level. Thomas is every bit as critical to the Legion of Boom as Sherman, and yet no one is talking about him (perhaps because Thomas doesn't talk about himself in the same way as Sherman does).
Let's not get the wrong idea here: Richard Sherman is certainly one of the best cornerbacks in the league. The (unfortunate) reality is that he can say anything he wants because he more often than not, backs it up. This, of course, doesn't suggest that you can't beat Sherman. He got torched on a number of plays in last year's playoff games (something no one has ever addressed...) But the guy more or less always backs up the talk (even if he only talks when they're ahead, or when he wants to come up with an excuse as to why he got beat or they lost).
Now, I'll just touch a little bit on this: I initially hated Richard Sherman. And I still do, but not as much as I did before. I'm all for trash talking. In fact, I actually have been enjoying a number of the things he's been saying in the lead up to the Super Bowl. He's got a little back and forth going with the Broncos players (including Manning). It seems like it's in good fun. That's the key to what I perceive as acceptable trash talking. I'm all for this kind of stuff. I'm all for trash talking on the field to try and get in your opponent's head. And certainly, Sherman carries a level of honesty that is actually kind of refreshing from the tight-lipped Patriot Way many fans are accustomed to. Still, I do believe in sportsmanship. When you make a play, celebrate with your team. Don't go and taunt the other team. Don't go on television and freak out about how great you are and how crappy another player is (especially when it was another player - Colin Kaepernick - who cost them the game, not Michael Crabtree).
Richard Sherman has proven to be just as sore a winner as he is a loser. If this is what sports allows as perfectly acceptable, I have to wonder what we're doing here. If it's all ok because the only thing that matters is winning, then how is sports not the most self-serving and self-important institution in the history of mankind? And like it or not, every single one of these professional athletes is a role model. That's why it's so frustrating that the league just gives their players a slap on the wrist. (See Marshawn Lynch - who I really like - but has been arrested for a DUI and had virtually no consequences from the league.)
And of course, let's not forget that Richard Sherman was caught for using performance-enhancing drugs a few years ago and got off - not because it was proven he didn't use them, but because of a legal technicality saying the sample wasn't entirely handled correctly. By all means, Sherman tested positive for PEDs and somehow no one cares because of a technicality. (Meanwhile, Spygate remains the most blown out of proportion "cheating" scandal in the history of sports...)
Sherman has been classless on the field. It's frustrating to hear him speak later in the week, when he's more collected and obviously very intelligent. In the aftermath of his strange and absurd rant post-game against San Francisco, he later apologized and told kids that they shouldn't taunt other players and he regretted his actions. I mean, I get that whole "heat of the moment" argument, but why is Richard Sherman the only player in the league who has done that? You don't think all those New England players are competitors too? Shoot. Tom Brady's post-game conferences this year have shown how pissed he gets when he loses, but you still never ever see him make any comments putting down other players (or even the other team!)
He seems very much that guy that you totally love when he's on your team, but when he's not, you totally hate him. I certainly appreciate the freshness he's brought to this week's media blitz. It's more interesting than a Patriots/Giants Super Bowl where everyone is showing too much respect to each other to the point where it seems borderline fake. Still, if I were a Seattle fan, I'd be a little bit worried. We've seen this before: players who are so cocky to the point where they seem to care more about themselves than the team. At first it seems fine, but over time those players start to pick the team apart.
Offense vs. Defense
And of course, we have another instance of a prolific offense facing off against a stout defense. Peyton Manning and company shattered records and presumably go into the Super Bowl as favorites (probably in the same way that the Patriots were favorites in 2011, actually - in that Vegas put them as favorites, but most football analysts picked the Giants). I suspect it's the same deal. Already, I've seen most analysts pick the Seahawks. Still, Denver seems to be the favorites.
My thought is just that we've seen this before. In 2001, we saw the defensive minded Patriots take on the Greatest Show on Turf and hold the best offense in the league to 17 points. We saw it again in 2002 with the defensively focused Buccaneers beating the last great Raiders offense. We saw it with the team that was previously the most prolific offense in NFL history! The New York Giants held the record breaking Patriots offense to just 14 points! They did it again in 2011, holding one of the best offenses in the league to just 17 points. You could even argue that the Saints did it to the Colts in 2009. Though not a great defense, the Saints ballhawking defense peaked just in time for the playoffs. They held Arizona to just 14 points in the Divisional Round, then held the vaunted Manning offense to just 17 points in the Super Bowl.
When it comes to offense versus defense Super Bowls, the stats heavily favor the defense.
Cold Weather
It sounds like this cold weather Super Bowl won't be so terrible after all. The forecast shows no inclement weather and the temperatures to be around 30 degrees. Fans and analysts (and presumably players) have sighed a little relief. I still don't get it. Apparently, our high school and college football teams can play in 4 degree weather, but not professional athletes?
And don't give me that nonsense about "it impacts the game." While that's true, does it not impact both teams? It's not like it affects just one team - like bad officiating impacted Carolina. (For the record, I think San Fran wins that game regardless, but that was one of the most lopsided officiating jobs I've seen in years, with a number of terrible, terrible calls and noncalls blatantly aided the 49ers.) Maybe I'm the only person who doesn't want to just always watch football played in these stale, safe, and artificial environments. Weather should be a factor!
If anything, this couldn't be more well set up for Peyton Manning to further pad his legacy. An outdoor playoff game (where he's traditionally struggled), in the cold (when he's traditionally struggled)? He wins now, no one would ever make that argument again. Further, are the Broncos or Seahawks really that great if they need warm weather and artificial conditions to win a Super Bowl? Everyone talks about how unfair a cold weather Super Bowl would be for a team built in warm weather, but why does the opposite never apply? What about warm weather Super Bowls that feature teams built for colder climates?
Listen, I'm not saying we always play Super Bowls in cold weather, but c'mon. It can't just be in Texas, Florida, California, and Louisiana every year. Bring some diversity to it! OH NO! THEY MIGHT HAVE TO PLAY IN SNOW!??!? Bologna. This is football.
Predictions:
I might be rooting a bit for the Broncos, but otherwise I have no real investment in this game. I do see it going to the Seattle Seahawks with a bit of a lopsided score. I see it being 31-16 with Marshawn Lynch the MVP. I think Manning throws two interceptions, with Lynch slowly getting stronger over time. I know, I know. "The most prolific offense only scores one, maybe two touchdowns? Really?" Yeah. I do think that. And I think that because that's exactly what happened last time the most prolific offense went up against a great defense. Of course, the Broncos offensive line is better than the '07 Patriots line. And the Seahawks pass rush isn't as good as the '07 Giants rush. But I don't see Manning being able to rely on the running game. He'll only be able to do so much with short ins and outs.
I see Manning's stats being something like 24-40 for 290 yards with 1 TD and 2 INTs. One of the backs might fumble as well.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Brady and the Conference Championship.
Stop me if you've heard this one: the New England Patriots won the AFC East title, then won their home game in the divisional round to advance to the conference championship. Sound familiar? It should. It's been the norm for the past 13 years.I mean, this marks only the eight time the Patriots have advanced to the AFC Championship game. (That's literally more than half of the seasons with Brady and Belichick!) It's the third straight year they've made it as well.
But let's be honest: Tom Brady hasn't looked particularly hot this year. In fact, he hasn't looked particularly good in the playoffs overall since their Super Bowl wins. Yes, we remember his great game against the Houston Texans in the 2012 Divisional Round, where he completed 62.5% of his passes for 344 yards and three touchdowns to no interceptions. Then there was the ridiculous Divisional Round game in 2011 when Brady completed 76% of his passes for 363 yards and six touchdowns to one interception - most of it in the first half. Those numbers are always impressive, but one must take that with a grain of salt as it was against the hapless 8-8, Tebow-led Broncos who backed into the playoffs. Still, you can't argue those performances were anything other than great - the kind you expect from a Hall of Fame, classically considered clutch quarterback.
He followed up his 2012 game with a performance in the AFC Championship that saw him complete just 53% of his passes for (a deceptive) 320 yards. He threw for just one touchdown while throwing two interceptions. In the follow-up of his video game performance in 2011, he completed a more reasonable 61% of his passes for 239 yards while throwing for zero touchdowns to two interceptions. Granted, he QB-sneaked a touchdown, but otherwise, he wasn't particularly impressive.
In fact, Tom Brady's career conference championship numbers aren't particularly impressive even dating back to the successful Super Bowl runs! Of course, there's something itself tremendously impressive about having nearly half a season's worth of football games under one's belt of just conference championships. There is no other active quarterback in the league who has played in large enough pool of conference championships to do this kind of analysis for!
Still, let's just look at those numbers. In his seven AFC Championship games, he has completed 142 passes on 233 attempts (60% of his passes completed). He's thrown for a total of 1559 yards. So far, this doesn't sound too bad. It's fairly average actually - completing an average of 20 passes per conference championship for 222 yards a game. Nothing amazing, but it's not nothing. However, Brady has thrown just 7 touchdowns to 9 interceptions in AFC title games! The thing that makes Brady so great is that he makes smart reads and takes care of the football. He's got one of the best TD to INT percentages in the history of the NFL, yet when it comes down to the conference title game, he turns it over more frequently. In fact, Tom Brady has only thrown for more touchdowns than interceptions in a conference title game once (2004).
Of course, to be fair, Brady only played about half of the title game in 2001 before he was injured and replaced with Bledsoe. Perhaps his second half performance would have created more of a balance. There's no getting around it though. His passer rating in AFC title games is 74.7. Even if you account for quarterback sneaks for touchdowns, Brady still accounts for more turnovers than touchdowns.
This is not to downplay Brady's accomplishments. He is obviously one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time (I tend to agree he is the best too!) However, if Brady fans' big knock on Peyton Manning is that the world sees him through rose tinted glasses (which they do), the fact appears that Brady lovers do the same thing with Brady. Of course, the ultimate statistic that matters is what separates the two in the first place: Brady is 5-2 in conference championships. It's the only genuinely impressive statistic related to Brady and conference title games. And really, it's the only one that matters.
But let's be honest: Tom Brady hasn't looked particularly hot this year. In fact, he hasn't looked particularly good in the playoffs overall since their Super Bowl wins. Yes, we remember his great game against the Houston Texans in the 2012 Divisional Round, where he completed 62.5% of his passes for 344 yards and three touchdowns to no interceptions. Then there was the ridiculous Divisional Round game in 2011 when Brady completed 76% of his passes for 363 yards and six touchdowns to one interception - most of it in the first half. Those numbers are always impressive, but one must take that with a grain of salt as it was against the hapless 8-8, Tebow-led Broncos who backed into the playoffs. Still, you can't argue those performances were anything other than great - the kind you expect from a Hall of Fame, classically considered clutch quarterback.
He followed up his 2012 game with a performance in the AFC Championship that saw him complete just 53% of his passes for (a deceptive) 320 yards. He threw for just one touchdown while throwing two interceptions. In the follow-up of his video game performance in 2011, he completed a more reasonable 61% of his passes for 239 yards while throwing for zero touchdowns to two interceptions. Granted, he QB-sneaked a touchdown, but otherwise, he wasn't particularly impressive.
In fact, Tom Brady's career conference championship numbers aren't particularly impressive even dating back to the successful Super Bowl runs! Of course, there's something itself tremendously impressive about having nearly half a season's worth of football games under one's belt of just conference championships. There is no other active quarterback in the league who has played in large enough pool of conference championships to do this kind of analysis for!
Still, let's just look at those numbers. In his seven AFC Championship games, he has completed 142 passes on 233 attempts (60% of his passes completed). He's thrown for a total of 1559 yards. So far, this doesn't sound too bad. It's fairly average actually - completing an average of 20 passes per conference championship for 222 yards a game. Nothing amazing, but it's not nothing. However, Brady has thrown just 7 touchdowns to 9 interceptions in AFC title games! The thing that makes Brady so great is that he makes smart reads and takes care of the football. He's got one of the best TD to INT percentages in the history of the NFL, yet when it comes down to the conference title game, he turns it over more frequently. In fact, Tom Brady has only thrown for more touchdowns than interceptions in a conference title game once (2004).
Of course, to be fair, Brady only played about half of the title game in 2001 before he was injured and replaced with Bledsoe. Perhaps his second half performance would have created more of a balance. There's no getting around it though. His passer rating in AFC title games is 74.7. Even if you account for quarterback sneaks for touchdowns, Brady still accounts for more turnovers than touchdowns.
This is not to downplay Brady's accomplishments. He is obviously one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time (I tend to agree he is the best too!) However, if Brady fans' big knock on Peyton Manning is that the world sees him through rose tinted glasses (which they do), the fact appears that Brady lovers do the same thing with Brady. Of course, the ultimate statistic that matters is what separates the two in the first place: Brady is 5-2 in conference championships. It's the only genuinely impressive statistic related to Brady and conference title games. And really, it's the only one that matters.
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