Measuring the Marigolds
Sports are in high gear, lately. The baseball playoffs are on along with good ol’ American football. I have always loved watching these two, but I have always hated sports coverage of games. Frankly, I wish they offered games on TV without announcers. I also hate shows where they discuss sports and I despise fantasy football. It occurred to me recently why I hate sports analysis. It’s the statistics.
Sure, statistics are pretty darn practical for coaches and gamblers, but they are means to an end. They are trends that can give insight into players and the game over the long term. Some stats are generally useful and others are not. Most importantly, though, statistics are only useful within a particular context. That context happens to be the goal for your team beat the other teams.
Statistics are not a number of things. They are not entertainment. Announcers do not need to tell me about post-season left-handed hitting at home when facing elimination. Nor do they need to tell me about 4th quarter passing yards in the red zone by rookie quarterbacks. Not only are these stats not very relevant, but they are presented at the wrong time. The players are in place. The coaches have made their decisions. Statistics have played their role. The only thing left to do is watch the players play the game.
Statistics are not proof of greatness. The point of a sport is to win the championship as a team. Was Dan Marino the greatest quarterback that ever lived? It’s a pretty ridiculous question. We can look at how many yards he passed and the number of completions he had, but it’s pointless. It’s a team game. Linemen protected him and receivers caught the ball. His opponents tried to sack him or block him and tried to cover receivers. Divorcing Marino or any player from their team and their opponent is impossible. For this very reason, fantasy football is a sham.
Whether it’s a poem, a frog or a game, analyzing may help one learn more about something. Most of the time, though, one just ends up killing it.
Sure, statistics are pretty darn practical for coaches and gamblers, but they are means to an end. They are trends that can give insight into players and the game over the long term. Some stats are generally useful and others are not. Most importantly, though, statistics are only useful within a particular context. That context happens to be the goal for your team beat the other teams.
Statistics are not a number of things. They are not entertainment. Announcers do not need to tell me about post-season left-handed hitting at home when facing elimination. Nor do they need to tell me about 4th quarter passing yards in the red zone by rookie quarterbacks. Not only are these stats not very relevant, but they are presented at the wrong time. The players are in place. The coaches have made their decisions. Statistics have played their role. The only thing left to do is watch the players play the game.
Statistics are not proof of greatness. The point of a sport is to win the championship as a team. Was Dan Marino the greatest quarterback that ever lived? It’s a pretty ridiculous question. We can look at how many yards he passed and the number of completions he had, but it’s pointless. It’s a team game. Linemen protected him and receivers caught the ball. His opponents tried to sack him or block him and tried to cover receivers. Divorcing Marino or any player from their team and their opponent is impossible. For this very reason, fantasy football is a sham.
Whether it’s a poem, a frog or a game, analyzing may help one learn more about something. Most of the time, though, one just ends up killing it.
posted by American Dilettante at
1:49 PM
3 Comments:
They should absolutely offer games with no commentary. For the most part, those guys just distract from what is happening on the field. Al Michaels is the worst offender. You can almost hear his brain trying to make connections between what is happening in the game and some out of touch pop culture reference. That is, if he's not subtly implying that that garbage time field goal just cost him mad cheddar on the under. There was a british soccer team that was rebroadcasting games with fan commentary instead of pro announcers. Apparently it was hilarious as the dudes mostly just made fun of everything. I believe the Cleveland Browns tried something similar last season when they allowed three regular guys to commentate on the first game of the year (on the radio) as a result of announcer hiring issues. From what I understand, it was a total disaster and the idea was killed immediately.
By
Anonymous, at 11:15 AM
Years ago, there was speculation that the explosion in the number of cable channels / bandwidth would allow just this sort of option. It would be so easy to add an SAP option of just crowd noise. But as far as I can tell, it's not yet an option, anywhere.
CBC locked out its employees in 2005 and showed CFL games with just crowd noise and an occasional local radio feed. I read complaints about the terribly amateurish camera work and production (run by the execs, filling in for the technicians!), I'm not sure if the lack of commentary went over well or not.
Tim Green, who does the NFL on FOX, is one of the few announcers that drives me up the wall. I've heard him described as a poor-man's Madden, but I think he's far worse than that. I find myself screaming at the TV at all of his factually inaccurate statements and improbable speculation. I'm getting angry just thinking about him.
The most offensive sports coverage moment I can remember was actually part of the pre-game show - Jeanne Zelasko asked Ernie Harwell as question, but rudely cut off his answer after 17 seconds when he wasn't likely to go as long as 30 to finish. Unlike other aged broadcasters (Harry Carey, Phil Rizzuto), Harwell always told anecdotes that were exactly on-topic and succinct. I flinched when they did that to him, just so they could do something completely irrelevant, like show Homer the animated baseball explain what a change-up is.
http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/07/13/wednesday/index.html
By
mizerock, at 5:09 PM
I agree with AD 100%. The only reason that baseball limps along is because the fans really only like the statistics. Name another sport where people score each play on a card. Someone should tell them about bowling - it's much more fun to keep score of!
And fantasy football is the worst. You want to create a fantasy team, buy Madden '05 to be cheap and shuffle all the players. FF has people rooting for individual players on opposing teams of a totally team sport. Asinine.
As for announcing, there's no good way to do it. Inevitably it becomes either a stat fest or a sports drama. Hate both. That said, it is nice to now if some team is letting its opponent convert 3rd downs like it's no tomorrow, or that it's offense is great. But stats could be like pop ups on pop up videos and they could save a lot of $ on announcers.
By
Trackball of Truth, at 6:36 PM
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