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FiveHourMarathon  Listen to Pierre  2yr ago (text post)   1897 thread views

MONDAY MORNING MOTTErBack SPORTS THREAD

I know there are some other sports fans on here, and I thought a discussion thread might be fun, and Monday is the natural day coming after the weekend football (both varieties) games and without a side thread scheduled. What's going on with your favorite teams/players/etc? What fun media controversies in the microcosm of sports can tell us something about the broader world? What culture war bullshit do you want to discuss in a sporting context?

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I used to sneer at "sportsball" as a teenager but started to enjoy casually watching games in college. I have a college football and NFL team that I follow and I'll occasionally watch a baseball game.

What I still don't understand is how people keep up with all of the names of the coaches, the players, the interpersonal drama between them, scores, etc. When I watch a game with someone and they ask me what team I follow and I say $NFL_TEAM_NAME, I sometimes get a response like "Oh man how about that thing with your QB last week during that press conference? And do you think John Doe is going to play again this season after that epididymis injury? What do you think of Coach Fillintheblank getting fired? And what about his replacement Coach Newguy?" And I just shrug and say I don't follow them that closely.

Do some people just read sports news all the time and relish all the drama? Seems like the male version of those women who are really into what the royal family is up to. Baseball stat nerds at least make sense to me, but I don't understand the drama people at all. Maybe there's more to it than that?

Edit: Thanks for all the awesome responses. I think I have a better understanding of the appeal now.

I like to have sports talk radio playing in the car when I drive, and it usually ends up covering some of that kind of stuff. The rest I get by looking at sports subreddits for a few minutes when I wake up.

Lol, so....

First, I think there is definitely a "male version of those women who are really into what the royal family is up to" element at play here. Especially the 5-6 slot on ESPN (Around the Horn especially, and to a somewhat lesser extent Pardon the Interruption). Back in my 20s, I watched these shows basically every day. At a certain point it occurred to me how much of these show revolved around 'Is he right to be angry?', 'Is he getting the respect he deserves?', etc, and those shows started to lose their appeal (also somewhat around the time I had kids), and it started to seem like a dumb way to spend an hour of my life every day, I rarely watch those some these days. (There's a fairly entertaining Wait But Why illustration about this - https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/newspaper1.png from an entertaining blog post https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/03/sports-fans-sports-fans.html)

Second, I think there's an element of 'knowing all the names', that isn't necessarily 'royals for guys', but actually about appreciating the depth of the game we're watching. In its current form, sports isn't nameless interchangeable robots carrying out various operations. If you have a team you follow, whether 1 particular guy is playing QB vs another particular guy playing QB is going to make a big difference for how your team does. To varying degrees, that's true up and down the lineup and includes the coaching staff.

Maybe somewhat similarly, there seem to be a lot people who really get into music in a way I don't really understand. I play various music stations when I'm driving around, there are songs that I find catchy and enjoy, but that tends to be the extent of my engagement with it. There seem to be a collection of people who take their favorite bands very seriously, its seems as if they make their musical tastes a major part of their personal identity. For the most part that seems.... fine, but they're definitely experiencing music and a different level of intensity than I am.

I suspect your experience of sports is similar to my experience of music, which, all in all, is fine, different strokes for different folks.

[Its interesting that you mention being a teenager as when you sneered at "sportsball", I think that's probably the timeframe in which I was most into knowing the different names. If you're actually interested in the mechanics of it, my parents at various times got me subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News as birthday presents, they both came weekly, I read them cover to cover, I never threw them out (they're probably still at my parent's house), when I was bored in my room, I would re-read old issues. It's hard to estimate how much of my life I spent doing this, maybe 5+ hours a week from age 9-18 or so??? Idk, I have a fairly deep reservoir of sports names from a certain era. I don't follow it nearly as closely now that I've gotten older.]

I think there’s a difference between being interested in the sport one degree removed from the object level (knowing players, following trades/injuries/coach changes etc.) and the reality TV/drama aspect. The former is similar to any media-consumption type of hobby, even more highbrow ones. You are [viewing art/listening to music/reading a book/watching a movie] and if you are really interested you might read about the [artist/musician/author/actor] and read reviews or analysis of the [book/song/movie]. I don’t know what you would call this but I wouldn’t exactly call it drama.

On the other hand, you are right that there is a reality tv aspect that has become a lot more popular in the Twitter era, particular among the NBA fandom. Discussing what players tweeted, or discussing what media figures said about the players tweets. things like that are 100% reality TV for men and I can’t stand it.

I think that your comparison to royal drama/celebrities misses the gambling and fantasy sports angle. Gambling and fantasy sports are key separators that provide large industries and dedicated audiences. Most other forms of entertainment/celebrity voyeurism don’t have similar marketplaces and monetary angles (though I’ll note that there have been (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to extend fantasy sports to movies/celebrities).

Seems like the male version of those women who are really into what the royal family is up to.

It's exactly that. Though I'd add that people who are super knowledgable about KiwiFarms or Gamergate or 4chan Patois or the latest outrage bait on the internet are probably at best a sidegrade; as are some interests that I practice myself. Is the guy yapping about Urban Meyer's playbook choices because he listens to Barstool sports podcasts all day really any worse off than someone who listens to Blocked and Reported and can wax rhapsodic about whatever train drama is big on Twitter?

In Dodgeball the ESPN 8 "The Ocho" joke lands because that was ESPN when I was 9 or 10 years old, just always showing sports even if they were pretty stupid sports. The talk segments have grown while the live sports segments have shrunk seemingly every year since then. More gossip, more offseason drama for the NBA/NFL, less professional bowling and strongman, and less hockey and baseball. You could probably tie this into a broad cultural femeninization if you wanted to, with men being ever more interested in gossip and less interested in the action, or to trying to attract female viewers. But there's a chicken and egg thing to your observation of it: do these guys talk about this stuff because they are interested in it naturally, or are they interested in it because when they listen to sports podcasts/radio and watch ESPN it gets presented to them?

Do some people just read sports news all the time and relish all the drama? Seems like the male version of those women who are really into what the royal family is up to.

You have it. In the US, the NFL/NBA is reality TV for guys, and they memorize all the names like fantasy nerds will know that Tyrion's squire Podrick is of House Payne in Game of Thrones.

Quite a lot of the audience consumes the NBA through highlights and headlines, and even with the NFL, they tend to spend more time gossiping about it and listening to sports talk shows. The games are secondary. An alien could infer a lot about humans from this. Reality TV shows with the most female audience tend to be about relationships, secrets, and betrayal, while sports on the other hand are about competition, dominance, the sweetness of victory and the agony of defeat — really engaging to dudes.

NFL gameplay is, fundamentally, a slot machine. You watch the reels spin (the players line up, the quarterback is accepting the snap), they begin to slow, suggesting a possible outcome (a receiver breaks open, the pass rush is closing in), and finally you experience either euphoria, mild pleasure, or annoyance depending on the outcome. (Touchdown, the pass is complete, interception.) This tickles the lizard brain pleasantly enough, but it wouldn't command the spare attention of guys for five straight months without the drama.

What excites sports fans most is when a famous player wildly underperforms or overperforms expectations. Probably the three most energizing sporting events of the last twenty years were when Eli Manning and Nick Foles (two mediocre quarterbacks) beat Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. Two of those games were quite tedious slogs to watch, but they sent the sports talk world and watercoolers across the nation into a frenzy. Guys just love the narratives, the basking in glory or wallowing in humiliation.

Do some people just read sports news all the time and relish all the drama?

Yes- and twitter/youtube/all the pre-and-post game analysis shows.

Seems like the male version of those women who are really into what the royal family is up to.

This is exactly the right analogy! Very similar dynamics.

But you're also right that the rise in stats (speaking re Soccer-ball anyway) has led to less and less emphasis on the drama and more and more on arguing about tactics/teams/players from this pseudo-scientific perspective. It's weird.

I'm a Packers fan (I'm from Wisconsin, so yeah of course I am). I don't generally watch the games, but I keep half an eye on them throughout the season. Seems like they're off to an OK start so far, if only because they beat the Bears. That said, I've seen some good seasons followed by playoff implosions multiple times recently, so I'm not going to hold my breath one way or the other. If nothing else, if the Packers beat the Bears in the other game this year I'll consider that something of a success.

Losing to the Vikings stings though. Seems like the same weird pattern as last year, where they stink out loud the first game, come back strong, then proceed to win a bunch of games in as dramatic and heart-attack-inducing ways as possible.

Losing to the Vikings isn't great for sure, but fortunately I don't get too invested in those matches. The Vikings may see us as their rival, IDK. But I've never really felt like they were our rival, that's the Bears.

Packers fan also. Their defense played really well against a delpleted Bucs team, and Doubs is coming into himself, which is really good to see. I was really happy to see Bakhtiari on the field again, what a long recovery.

TLDR: College football. 4 Team playoff good. NIL bad. Conference expansion bad and we need to get congress to fix it.

Viewership is still great AFAIK, but it seems like there are a lot of problems and complaints from the fans about the direction of College Football and I personally find it worrisome. Wondering what other people’s thoughts are and potential ideas for how they could be solved.

Playoffs. Basically, I think the playoffs are pretty much perfect the way they are. The allure of college football to me has always been how different it is from American pro sports. There are ~130 teams vying for a tiny postseason, and there are no artificial methods of creating parity like a salary cap or the draft. This makes the regular season extremely high stakes since you can only have one bad week and still hope to make the playoffs. Every major upset has a ripple effect throughout the sport for the remainder of the season. This makes it so that the regular season is the playoffs. Ohio State might have all 5 star recruits but they have one brutal loss to Purdue or Iowa and their playoff hopes are gone. This makes it so the championship winner is always the actual best team, as you have to be nearly perfect to make it, there are no situations like the 9-7 Giants winning the Super Bowl. A lot of people disagree with this and don’t like that there’s not a clear path to playoff but I think that’s what makes the sport so much fun. Every game matters, and expanding the playoffs will only dilute that. I don’t think the committee is actually biased, and the constant dickriding of G5 teams on Reddit is ridiculous. If they actually show on the field that they are a top 4 team they will make it as we saw with Cincinnati last year. I don’t think merely going undefeated against a shitty schedule should be a guaranteed playoff spot, the same people who beg for undefeated UCF with the 100th ranked schedule to make the playoff complain when Alabama plays one FCS team or Clemson makes it after going undefeated in the ACC. If Alabama could somehow play an AAC schedule where they’d go undefeated, winning every game by 40, the same G5 dickriders would say their schedule was too weak. The 4 team playoff has not produced any truly controversial winners and out of the 3 playoff games every year at least 2 are blowouts. There are almost never more than 3 teams who are legitimate contenders and expanding to 12 teams won’t change that.

NIL/Recruiting/Transfers. I found the constant guilt-tripping about the poor players not getting paid to be really annoying, and generally I think the players benefit much more from the school than the school does the players. At the same time, it seems unfair that players weren’t allowed to sell their own autographs or anything so NIL seems fair enough to me in theory. But as literally everyone could’ve predicted, it provides a way for boosters to openly pay players in a way that was under the table before, and players are surely getting paid much more now than when it was in secret. Many people complain about the positive feedback loop that is college football recruiting. Many schools have natural advantages in location, resources, history of success, etc. but recently the most successful teams just keep stockpiling more and more talent. People see NIL as a way to mitigate that, where schools with a lot of wealthy boosters can improve their teams recruiting by paying for recruits. But why is that good? I think the fact that success begets success in college football is a good thing, it’s unique in American sports at least and rewards you for running a successful program and hiring good coaches. If the other schools are mad that Nick Saban is getting all the recruits then hire your own Nick Saban. It’s not like it’s impossible to break into the elite of recruiting, Dabo Swinney did it very recently during the Saban era. I don’t see how rewarding teams for having rich boosters is better than rewarding teams for being successful and investing in the program. With the free transfers and NIL, college football success gets even further removed from the on-field results. Even for the lower tier teams a school like Cincinnati could have been able to capitalize on their success in the recruiting market, but that only becomes harder when worse programs with more resources can just throw money at the players. I don’t know how this can be fixed since I don’t think the NCAA would be able to regulate what is “real” NIL vs pay-for-play, but I think it’s really bad for the sport.

Conference Realignment. Nobody seems to support it but the incentives are what they are and it seems that some sort of consolidation into a super-league is inevitable. It seems like this is the least controversial issue in that everyone hates it. Nobody wants to see UCLA in the Big Ten. My only hope is that the consolidation leads to fragmentation again, when the conferences become so geographically nonviable that we can see a “Big Ten Pacific Division” or something that’s basically the old Pac 12. But my radical solution that will never happen and probably isn’t feasible is to get congress involved! This could be the bipartisan issue that unites the country around a common goal. The red team loves college football and tradition, and doesn’t want to see the once-great regional conferences marginalized. The blue team can say why are we spending all this money to fly college athletes across the country when we had perfectly good regional conferences, and we can’t expect the USC women’s volleyball team to fly to Rutgers for a Wednesday night match.

Wondering what everyone’s thoughts/ideas/solutions are about the future of college football?

I really wish FBS college football could be set up with 3 "eastern" and 3 "western" (the dividing line would likely be a good bit east of the Mississippi because of population trends) 20 team conferences in tiers. Then use bowl games for the championship playoffs (top two teams from the top eastern conference vs top teams from the top western conference) and promotion/relegation games within the geographic tiers. It would make every bowl game meaningful, keeps teams honest during the regular season (each conference plays 10 games within the conference with one tune up game, homecoming and an end of the year rivalry game allowed outside of the conference). In the top conferences only the 10 conference game record determines eligibility for the playoffs, and makes the championship more likely to be the best 4 teams in the nation (because the top conferences played 10 games within the conference, and the weak teams in the conference can eventually be relegated, and there is a path allowing any team in the BCS system eventually reach the championship through purely on the field performance).

I'm not a fan of ESPN picking the schools that go into national superconferences based on the school's ratings.

I also support the promotion/relegation idea but it will definitely never happen. Regarding the playoff though, I think that ESPN does play an outsized role in deciding the future of the sport, particularly in regards to the conference realignment as of late. But I just don’t see evidence that they are influencing the playoff committee at all. Ohio State is probably the single biggest viewership draw and they have been left out more than once despite being one-loss conference champions. On the other hand Clemson is a smaller viewership draw compared to other giants of the sport and they have made it 6? times. There really haven’t been any controversial selections that would greatly increase viewership

Wondering what everyone’s thoughts/ideas/solutions are about the future of college football?

I've always thought CFB would benefit the most of any American sport from Promotion/Relegation systems from European sports over a nationwide playoff system or too much conference consolidation. It has the deep roots, with tiers and divisions already understood all the way down to outlying state schools. It has the loyal fans that will follow their team even in the bottom division. Have a nationwide top tier of 12-20 teams, bottom 3-6 get relegated, to be replaced by the winners of 3-6 regional conferences, and so on and so forth.

Via youtube I kept up with the pro beach volleyball tournament that was held in Phoenix, Arizona on Friday evening and Saturday.

The duo I was pulling for on the women's side won the trophies, so yay them.

Where do you find streams for obscure sports like that on a regular basis? Honestly there are times when I'd love to just sit down and watch live sports when I'm drinking or something, don't really care what.

"Like that" and "regular basis"? 'Fraid I have no advice for you. I only know how to find one sport on an irregular basis.

I've been following football pretty heavily this year, primarily because my mother has been and I like to watch the games with her and my father. My team, the Eagles, have been way outperforming expectations, and it's what you want to see, but on a meta level I can't help but look ahead and predict that they're going to be massively overrated going into the late season. Look at this schedule, they don't play a single team in the top half of TheRinger power rankings until the Cardinals; and they only play two real contenders all season in the Packers and the Titans. Any given Sunday and all that, but the Eagles could easily have a 13-14 win season while losing all their games against teams that finish with winning records. It's remarkable how the Dak Prescott injury really throws the Eagles season into easy mode for now; they're strong favorites in the division and likely to get homefield for part of the playoffs as well.

So if you have some kind of opportunity to short the Eagles on a bet late season, do it, they're going to look much better in the regular season than in the playoffs, even if they are a legit team. I'm all aboard the Jalen Hurts and the three batmen train, but they're going to look great against bottom feeders all season and then run into a bunch of pros in the playoffs and have to learn to hit a higher level; much like they did with the Bucs last season.

So now that the Eagles have made the Super Bowl,

Any thoughts on how this post played out?

Good job predicting 13-14 wins!

From this vantage point they seemed to have gotten pretty good luck with their playoff draw, between a Giants team that seemed like a good matchup, then a 49ers team that promptly ran out of QBs.

I guess the Eagles were a 2.5 point favorite going into the 49ers game, were you motivated to short them on that line? (fwiw, I was somewhat favoring the 49ers going into that game, not a sports bettor generally though, so my wallet wasn't behind my thought processes).

Looks like the Super Bowl opened as a pick 'em, and moved to Eagles by 1.5.

You motivated to short the Eagles now? Have they converted you?

So I was 100% wrong on virtually every point. I expected the division to be a breeze, in reality the NFCE wound up having zero losing teams. Where I was wrong:

-- I underestimated the Eagles, but I also overestimated the rest of the league. This was a historic season of teams that should have been good failing. I did not think this would be the year that Brady, Rodgers, Stafford, Carr, Murray, and Wilson would all suddenly suck. There's a good chance if those guys all replicated their past seasons, the playoff picture is likely very different. Throw in that the 49ers were on their third, and then their fourth, and then out of, quarterbacks; along with injuries to NFC starting quarterbacks in NOLA and Arizona. If you had told me at the time of writing that post that the most accomplished quarterback in the NFC Divisional Round was Dak Prescott, I would have reassessed my view of the Eagles chances. Hell, consider if Garropolo had been the starter for SF Sunday night, then Purdy would have been the backup, that game would have been a hell of a lot harder. My assumptions about the Eagles running into a team like last year's Bucs relied on a team like last year's Bucs existing! You have to go back years to see a Divisional round with a QB group this "bad" in terms of past accomplishments. You always had to get through some mix of Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Wilson to get to the Super Bowl. I'm using QB as a simple proxy for teams, but it works pretty well: you just didn't see well organized veteran teams this year, which I think is the Eagles' weakness.

-- Right now the line on the big game seems to be bouncing between small advantage either side and even money. If Mahomes was 100% healthy, I think the Chiefs are favorites by at least 3 points. This is a straight bet on Mahomes' ankle health. Mahomes isn't 100% healthy, and the Eagles happen to have a demonstrably destructive pass rush. Matchups make fights. Travis Kelce is a hell of a Tight End, but he's a bad-mediocre blocker when he is even asked to block, who is gonna stop Reddick and Sweat? The Eagles weakness has been teams running on them. Can Pacheco carry the Chiefs? There's a good chance that the Eagles win this game against a visibly hobbled Mahomes (if not from the kickoff, he very well might be slow to get up after getting buried under Cox, Reddick, and Sweat in the first half, the Chiefs have a worse O-Line than SF and the Eagles got hits on half the drop-backs on Sunday); afterward there's a reasonable argument that no Super Bowl win has ever been cheaper. But flags fly forever. After a very well-earned win with Foles, a cheap one would be funny just to watch the Seethe.

-- I didn't realize that the Eagles had essentially invented a new play, almost certain to be banned next year based on a lot of complaints from other teams, the QB sneak/tank where they just SHOVE the QB into the endzone. No one does it quite like Philly, with the pro-bowl O-Line and a quarterback that squats 600. It really allows for reliable fourth down conversions other teams don't get. The Eagles were 4th in 4th down conversion percentage, but they had double the attempts that the other top-5 teams had. Being able to reliably gain 1-2 yards might not seem like much, but it meant that the team could play 4 down football aggressively. Getting 3 yard carries on 1st-3rd down put them in position for a quick sneak; this is great clock control. It allowed for shots downfield on 3rd and 1, which lead to some touchdowns. It generally intimidated the other team, which is good for everything.

-- Turns out Jalen Hurts is a national treasure, and a Super Bowl between Hurts and Mahomes represents significant moral and racial progress for the United States as a country from the days of Brady throwing to Aaron Hernandez. I really think that the leadership he showed, along with Kelce, helped drive this team. Tra Thomas talked about it on his podcast; when you see your QB willing to go out there and take a big hit for a few yards, it inspires the whole team to go to war for him.

The upshot of all this is, I'm just bad at predictions, my arrogance is showing. Even if the Eagles lose on Sunday to a team with the best Quarterback-Coach combo in the league, it's still hard to say they were overrated.

I think a lot of these power rankings suffer from the same problem that college rankings do; namely, that they stick too closely to preseason rankings regardless of what happens on the field. So a team like the Giants that's showing promise is going to be ranked behind the Bengals regardless of what happens on the field because we just know that the Giants are terrible and that the Bengals Super Bowl appearance wasn't a fluke. Take a look around the NFC and take stock of what you're actually contending with:

NFC East

You've already heavily implied that the Eagles are the best team in this division, especially with Dak out, and only one of their three wins was against a team from this division. The Commanders suck and the Cowboys don't have a QB. The Giants are an interesting proposition. The media has completely written them off as being terrible for the foreseeable future but they're 2–0 due to wins against mediocre teams (but unexpected wins nonetheless), and if they beat the Cowboys tonight it doesn't tell us anything else. So there's no real playoff competition here that the Eagles won't see during the regular season.

NFC North

The Eagles already beat 2 teams from this division and a third, the Bears, shouldn't be a problem. The Packers are a different story but they don't have a passing game so while I'd definitely call them a contender, they aren't scary enough to come across as a team you have to watch out for.

NFC South

The Falcons, Saints, and Panthers aren't going anywhere. Their offense looked anemic yesterday but that probably has something to do with all their wide receivers being out (and Cole Beasley being in), so I wouldn't count them out just yet. That being said, Tom Brady hasn't played particularly great so far, and there are rumors that he's having personal problems. With Godwin and Evans back I think they'll be good, but not some kind of juggernaut.

NFC West

The Seahawks aren't going anywhere. The Niners might, but I wouldn't be too worried about them. The Cardinals get a lot of hype, but they haven't looked good since their mid-season meltdown last year, and they couldn't get anything going yesterday. That leaves the Rams, the reigning Super Bowl Champions. They looked good yesterday against the Cardinals but their performance against the Saints last week was questionable and the Bills had them completely figured out in the season opener. I wouldn't count them out, but the evidence so far this season isn't looking too good.

My point is that I don't think the NFC has the kind of juggernaut that is going to tear through the playoffs an embarrass a team that only made it in on an easy schedule. If the Eagles get torn apart, it won't be until the Super Bowl, and even then only if Buffalo and possibly Miami or Kansas City are the opponent.

I'd love an Eagles/Chiefs "Revenge of Andy Reid" super bowl.

Agreed, I'm fairly confident (and the sports books seem to agree right now ) that the Eagles are going to win the division and probably get good seeding in the playoffs, only possible downside risks are like Saquon goes off (local kid) or Dak comes back playing better than originally expected. They could easily end up the #1 seed in the NFC! But the team lacks a certain, idk, professionalism that was on display in their playoff loss last year to the Bucs. I'm not sure I'd bet on the Eagles against the Bucs rematch in the playoffs (flashback to the Warren Sapp days). So far it seems Hurts took a big step forward, thanks to having more targets he has less tendency to force a pass to Smith or run the ball all the time; but you get in there against a real veteran playoff team they aren't going to make easy mistakes and they aren't going to give away points, I'm not sure. Maybe that doesn't happen, like you said, until the super bowl. Regardless I'll be getting high and cheering for them, the analysis doesn't matter in the end.

Who's your team?

I got a twitter follow recommendation for you, I've really enjoyed following @TheHonestNFL, pretty technical football heavy, claims to be an anonymous ex-NFL scout, (I supposed no one really know who you are on twitter, if he's bullshitting, he does a pretty convincing job of it). Anyway, a lot of the content he puts out is Eagles based.

(on a larger scale, expecting some regression to the mean and not overreacting to small sample sizes, are typical good ideas when considering the NFL)

Good luck this year!

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