The Classroom Conservative

21-17

Phooey!

Beaten Fair And Square

For the first time since 2008, the professional football team I have followed since childhood, the team that has broken my heart more times than I can count, won a playoff game.  Saturday night’s 45-10 victory over the Denver Broncos snapped the New England Patriots’ playoff draught, but the most interesting sports coverage on the weekend had to do with a game that was played on December 4.

The first meeting of the season between New York and Green Bay suggested that the Giants would give the defending champions a game in the divisional round on Sunday, but before kickoff everyone was still talking about the moment, more than a month ago, when Hakeem Nicks beat Packers’ defensive back Charles Woodson for a touchdown.  Quarterback Eli Manning had the ball, second-and-goal on the four yard line.  Woodson had perfect coverage; it really was.  But when Manning lobbed his pass, Nicks reached out and grabbed the ball with one hand.  There was absolutely nothing else Woodson could have done, and, in the moment after the play, he reached out his hand to congratulate his opponent.

I remember thinking, at the time, that the gesture was unusual, but I never imagined that it would elicit such comment.  Players on both teams thought that it was inappropriate, that Woodson should have been upset about having been beaten; if he wanted to congratulate his opponent, he should have waited until after the game.

I have been struck by a realization of just how potent raw energy can be during sporting events.  Clearly, as fans, we get caught up in the same emotion as the players feel, so why should I be surprised?  In a recent documentary, for example, Bill Belichik, Patriots head coach, was shown chewing out his players for not flocking to a teammate to celebrate a good play.  Could that frenzy be that important?  I have always admired the pre-game demeanor of football players, dressed as suited assassins, filing off their bus and into the stadium.  Is that steely, confident determination really counter-productive once they get on the field itself?

To my mind, Charles Woodson did not lose his focus during that December game.  God knows that, between the television time outs and the instant replays, there are all kinds of interruptions.  I had, and still have, no problem with a competitor stopping to acknowledge something unusual, even when it is done by a competitor.

The English Professor’s Pet Peeve: They Went On To Win

Sports journalism has been the cause of so much mangling of the English language.  It was on the radio, after all, that I first heard “efforting” used for “trying” or “attempting.”

One annoying thing I have noticed recently has to do with time and tense.  When teams go into overtime, whether it is in football or in hockey, or in the home half of an extra-inning baseball game, we find ourselves in the overly-dramatic “sudden death” situation.  Any score will result in the immediate end of the game.  But how often have you seen, in voiceover that accompanies the highlight package, an understatement of the drama of this occurrence?  (I know, I know: who would accuse sports announcers of not being dramatic?)

Imagine this scenario: in the midst of a football overtime period, the Giants set up to kick a field goal against the Cowboys.  The moment that ball clears the goalposts, the game is over; that is the nature of “sudden death.”  But I often hear this reported, thus: “Lawrence Tynes kicks a 38-yard field goal in overtime, and New York goes on to beat Dallas, 23-20.”

I beg to differ.  If Mr. Tynes kicks a 38-yard field goal, New York beats Dallas.  Right there.  Then.

Imagine, if you will, how this would affect a description of one of the most significant sporting victories in recent Canadian sporting history: “Ladies and gentlemen, as we approached the 7:40 mark in overtime of the gold medal game, Jerome Iginla pushed the puck to Sidney Crosby, who wristed it between the legs of American goalie Ryan Miller.  Canada went on to win the gold medal.”

That is not exactly how I remember it.  How about you?  Medals did not appear magically around the necks of Canadian players, but the game definitely ended with that shot.  No one had to go on to do anything.

I think part of the confusion has been caused by overtime situations that are not “sudden death.”  If the Blue Jays, visiting the Bronx, score the go-ahead run in the top of the twelfth, they go on to win the game by holding off the Yankees in the bottom of the inning.  If, in a hockey shootout, one team scores an unmatched goal on their first attempt, they go on to win as their goaltender sets out to make three stops.

But let us not let a mangling of the language detract from the excitement of an event that decides a contest immediately.

The Folly Of The Sports Book

With Friday, thoughts turn to a weekend of football: National Football League, American College, and -- if there is nothing else on -- even a glimpse of the CFL, if the Saskatchewan Roughriders are playing. Driving home from the mountains last weekend, we started talking about how a gambler's approach to football games seeks to add more excitement to being a sports fan. Think of it from this perspective: the Indianapolis Colts, the team for which my wife roots, has won more than two out of every three regular season games it has played since Peyton Manning became their starting quarterback in 1998. For more than ten years now, Colts fans have had every good reason to think that their team will prevail each Sunday. But they have less reason to be certain about by how much the Colts will win or about how many points will be scored by the Colts and their adversaries.

That is the basis of the line, gambling odds on who will win a game and by how much. The "over/under" is the number of points two teams might exceed or fail to score in any given game. For example, when the Detroit Lions traveled to Wisconsin to play the Green Bay Packers last Sunday afternoon, the book had the home team winning by two touchdowns, and the over/under was set at 45.5 points. There was little surprise in the fact that the winless Lions, without their regular quarterback, lost the game. But the final score was 28-26. If you had wagered that the road underdog would prevent the Packers from covering the line, and that the teams would score 46 points or more, you would have been very happy, indeed. But if you had wagered on the assumption that the Packers would trounce the visitors by a score of, say, 31-7, you would be the unhappiest Packer fan in the land. And that, in essence, is how gambling is supposed to make watching sports better.

It is seldom that much fun, in my limited experience. When I have participated in pools and other forms of friendly, recreational gambling, I have found myself cheering against people I like, cheering for people I do not, and wishing for outcomes that made little logical sense. But, in the spirit of adventure, my wife and I decided to conduct a little experiment: we "gambled" on last week's games. We went through the lines with one goal: find the ten most secure bets we could find. Look for sure things. We weren't looking for possible upsets or results that would require the stars to align just right. We sought sure things. I am told that if one could be right even sixty per cent of the time, a C- in my world, one would be a fabulously successful gambler. I follow football news each day; my wife is a more casual fan.

We both went 4-6.

We would not have lost our shirts, but we would have lost money. Our losses would be small enough, I suspect, that had we been serious we would have been lured back the next weekend. Want to see what went right and what went wrong for me? Want to see how easy it is, in the world of gambling, for assumptions to be disproved?

1. Jets 38, Bills 14. Although Buffalo had scored a lot of points in a recent loss to New England, I had no doubt that the New York Jets would beat the Bills by the advertised six points or more. As a matter of fact, I thought that line was a gift. Bet the money you had for a Thanksgiving turkey and still be certain of your dinner.

2. Chargers 41, Cardinals 10. I was correct in picking San Diego to beat Arizona by at least nine points. The Chargers, though chronic underachievers, are far more talented than Arizona, a team with no answer at quarterback. The second easy pick.

3. Texans 31, Raiders 24. I was correct in picking Houston to beat Oakland by more than 3.5. (The point of this line is that if the Texans, say, won with a field goal in overtime, the gambler still loses.) Coming off a tough loss to Dallas, I thought that Houston would be motivated to beat an Oakland team that has not met even modest expectations this year. I had little fear of an upset.

4. I took the over on the above game, with the number set at 44. Although I did not like Oakland's chances, I still liked their offence enough to imagine that the teams could score 45 points or more.

Now, had the rest of the weekend proceeded like this, I would have wondered why all sports wagerers were not millionaires. I was about to find out!

5. Redskins 17, Eagles 12. With the Eagles at home, I liked Philadelphia to lay a beating on their former quarterback, Donovan McNabb. While McNabb had something to prove to his old team, his offence in Washington is yet to find its legs -- and they did score only 17 points, after all. What I could not have known is that a resurgent Michael Vick, playing for the Eagles, would be injured early in the game. Sound assumption undone by injury.

6. Giants 17, Bears 3. The line had the unbeaten Bears going on the road and losing by 3.5, which they did. I believed that the Chicago offence, which has been good, would take advantage of a New York team in some disarray. The Giants have had a tendency to go into prolonged funks when things go wrong but, last week, their defence played very well and knocked the Bears' quarterback out of the game. Who could have foreseen that defensive effort?

On a side note, with little time left and the Giants close to scoring, the coaching staff decided to run out the clock, in a gesture of sportsmanship. Of course, the Giants were winning by two touchdowns with less than two minutes to play. But if the line had been 15 and that decision was made, every Giants fan with a wager on her or his favourite team would have gone home angry.

7. Falcons 16, 49ers 14. Atlanta was another team coming off a tough loss, a talented team with a lot to prove. San Francisco, winless, was in disarray, having fired one of its coaches in response to poor offensive play. The 49ers were on the road, and yet the line was only one touchdown. One had good reason to believe the Falcons would win by 15 or 20 points. In fact, they were lucky to win at all, and they did not win by enough for me to win my bet. Atlanta's underachievement was a surprise.

8. Browns 23, Bengals 20. The Browns were winless, and it appeared that Cincinnati was beginning to find its legs. Obviously, the Bengals have more chronic problems on offence than I imagined they did. The line had Cincinnati by a field goal. Right result, wrong team.

9. Jaguars 31, Colts 28. This should have been easy money. True, Jacksonville always gives Peyton Manning a tough time, and the game was played in Florida. However, Indianapolis was showing signs of dominance after a shaky start in its first game of the season. The Jaguars' offence had been terrible. There is no way I imagined they could score enough points to beat the Colts. The line in this game was Indy by eight points. With the result in doubt for most of the fourth quarter, it was clear that Manning was not going to score enough for his team to win by more than a touchdown. From a gambler's perspective, it was over long before the result was known.

10. Broncos 26, Titans 20. The line had Tennessee by a touchdown at home. I thought that Denver was overrated, and that the talent on the Titans would carry the day. I had it exactly backwards.

So, in summary, keep your real money in your pocket. The Jacksonville/Indianapolis game provides a good example. Although the game was tied with seconds to play, the game had no suspense left for me. That was more fun? My assumptions about short-term proclivities and long-term trends were often wrong. Dogs won and lost; favourites won and lost. Favourites won by too little. Some offenses sputtered; some defences raised themselves up, unexpectedly. It is clear that, as close in talent as most of these teams find themselves, in practical terms, the results are often simply subject to chance.

Chicago Bears 30, Cleveland Browns 6

Whenever I attend an academic conference or visit a city to do some research, I must always deal with incredulous locals. "You came here to visit a library?" they will ask, looking at me as though I just arrived from Mars. On my recent trip to Chicago, however, I experienced something unique. By tacking on an afternoon at Soldier Field, I won the approval -- and understanding -- of every man and woman I encountered along the way. "Oh, you're here to see the Bears," they would exclaim with pride. "You came all the way from Canada for a football game!"

Although I am a huge NFL fan, buying heartbreak in January 2008 in exchange for having followed many mediocre New England Patriots teams, I had never gone to an actual game until last weekend. It was a fabulous experience. Forget for the moment that the sluggish home team had the advantage of playing the Cleveland Browns, one of the worst teams to take the field for years. The sheer spectacle was unforgettable. When you watch football on television, everything is so focused, so directed. In person, there is simply so much going on that you can never be bored. Sitting in the "nose-bleeds" high above Lake Michigan, I can imagine how one might die of exposure, but no one is dying of boredom.

At that height, having to scale steps that reach up almost horizontally, there is a comradeship amongst patrons. Even the friendly rivalry between Bears and Browns fans seemed extremely playful. "I left my sombrero in the car," said one guy from Cleveland, seeing a local in a Bears pancho. Upon spotting another wandering fellow dressed up as a beer keg, someone else called out, "Hey, how about coming as a guy who can find his seat!" I was surprised only at the callousness of a group of medical students behind us, young men who commented about one aged gentleman, "I'm not (yet) a doctor, but that guy should stay home!" Come on, should we question even a very old fan's right to partake? And, anyway, he was hardly the worst physical specimen at the game. "Chicago," I heard another out-of-towner say, "is the only NFL city where the fans wearing jerseys are bigger than the players!" That might be true: there seem to have been a few deep-dish pizzas consumed on the grounds that day.

What I do not understand, though, is why alcohol consumption plays such a big role at athletic events. I am no stranger to a drink now and then, but I cannot fathom why someone would want to get wasted at a football game, where you come to see and remember -- and where beers cost nearly eight bucks. A fellow in front of us, already feeling no pain as he ascended the steps, arrived with two in his hands. His companion had two herself. When friends arrived, they brought more for this gentleman, and he bought more from vendors and got up, at one point, to secure a fresh supply. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, he was giving them away. With a couple of minutes left, in celebration of a great defensive play, this guy jumped up and proceeded to tumble forward two rows. "I'm just trying to have a good time!" he grinned to all around him, at which point he threw a nearby glass into the concrete beneath his feet: his own end zone "spike." Beer splattered everywhere, and the fellow and his friends retreated down the steps in shame. They left before the game was over.

Whether you love how we organize ourselves economically or whether you loathe it, you must admire how our system can bind to itself people with varied financial interests. The owner of the Cleveland Browns was at the game on Sunday, so appalled by his team's performance that he fired his general manager soon after. A young woman not there was a clerk at Borders who was so excited to hear that I was going to the game that she forgot to demagnetize my purchase, causing me no end of trouble in other stores. "You're going to see my boys!" she squealed. "I haven't been able to afford to buy a ticket yet this year, but I love my boys. I'm worried that they played so badly last week, but you're so lucky to be going."

Lucky I am. But so are the Bears, a team that commands such loyalty. I also get the sense that the fragile fabric of American society is pretty lucky, too. In spite of all the open dissent you see, hear, and read, its citizens hang on to the shreds of those few things that bind them together. A common spectacle, shared by those at the top and the bottom of the economic ladder, keeps those whose interests are mutually exclusive from acting out their frustrations -- at least when the home team plays.

Brian Billick's Pay Cut

With Thursday night's Steelers victory as an appetizer, the National Football League hit its stride on Sunday with a full slate of games. I flipped between six matches, but I spent most of my time watching the Browns and the Vikings to see how Brett Favre would play. Now, I cannot claim to have heard every syllable uttered on the broadcast, but I did catch, on two occasions, analyst Brian Billick complain about his salary.

I have a lot a time for Mr. Billick, former coach of the Baltimore Ravens. But when a man grouses that his last contract, one which paid him $5 million a year, has been replaced with only a six figure deal to make televised observations about football once a week, I cannot help but notice.

Nearly ten per cent of the American workforce is still unemployed, right?

Nothing Is Impossible Online

For as long as I can remember, I have been reading Paul Zimmerman's football columns in Sports Illustrated. Dr. Z, as he is known, affectionately, writes in a direct, personal style that cuts through media spectacle and brings analysis back to the sporting enterprise, itself. But in online features like his weekly picks and especially in his "mailbag" and his "power rankings," assessments of the relative strength of all National Football League teams, Dr. Z allows himself running commentary about his wife, his love for travel and fine wine, and his life in the American northeast.

About six months ago, seemingly without warning, and in the middle of the football season, Dr. Z suffered three strokes, blows that left him with serious impairments. His writings disappeared from SI, and it was not until Peter King, his fellow sportswriter, updated the web readership that we learned what had happened.

I felt the shock of Dr. Z's illness profoundly. I could count on at least three regular postings a week, and I knew exactly when and where to look for them. When he was silenced, it was like losing regular conversations with a friend. So, as soon as Mr. King announced that there would be a fundraiser, I bought a ticket for the event in New Jersey, an event I could never find the time to attend. I am thrilled that the event and related auction raised more than $150,000 for the "Nothing Is Impossible" foundation to get intensive therapy for Dr. Z. Following his wife's blog, it is clear that he has come a long way already, and who knows how much more he might improve.

In any case, my point here is less about stroke therapy and more about how effective the internet can be in creating a sense of community. The foundation was announced online, and an online auction fueled the fundraising. The immediacy of Dr. Z's writings, the ways in which he engages directly his readership, demonstrates a real strength of the online form. And with print media losing traction, this warm response to a personal tragedy might underline something about how journalists can thrive in a new environment.

Hyperlinks And The Color Blind

Jon Wertheim's excellent coverage of the Australian Open men's tennis final last weekend featured a letter from John Webb, a reader from South Carolina who complained about the use of hyperlinks in cnnsi.com stories. Unlike sites like this one that use both font color and underlining to mark hyperlinks, cnnsi.com marks its links only in red. (I think they are red: I, too, am color blind.) The reader suggests choosing another color, but I have to wonder what is the problem with underlining? If that makes an ugly composition, how about adopting bold? The site currently abuses bold to mark proper names that have no links.

With the well-documented difficulties in the newspaper industry, it seems clear that even those of us who now get much of our daily information electronically will only continue to rely more and more on the internet. The ability to reference and cross-reference through hyperlinks is, along with the facility to update frequently, the demonstrable advantage of the form. But who wants to pore over lines and lines of online text in an attempt to discern subtle changes in color? If everyone, short of Kanye West, knows that you do not write in all caps, can we not agree similarly to refrain from relying solely on color to mark those places you would like your readers to click?

Thanksgiving Turkeys

The National Football League is the most successful sports operation in the world, and for my money it features the best talent in the best endeavor. It is almost always pitch-perfect in its organization: the length of the games, the length of the season, the number of teams, and the salary cap. What I cannot understand is how it gets wrong its Thanksgiving extravaganza.

I marvel at the big deal Americans make of Thanksgiving. There is no holiday like it in Canada, and there is certainly no other holiday I can imagine with such a solid sporting connection. As big as Thanksgiving might be, it would be diminished if it did not feature NFL football. There are now three games on this most special Thursday each year.

Unfortunately, these are now often meaningless contests, as parity makes it difficult to predict year to year who the competitive teams might be by this point in the season. As I type this, the third lopsided game of the day is churning towards its conclusion. Anyone who follows the NFL could have seen this disaster coming, but perhaps no one could have seen it coming last spring: far enough in advance to influence the schedule. However, it would not take an avid fan to know well in advance that the game involving the Detroit Lions would be a bigger turkey than that sitting on tables across the United States. The Lions are chronic underachievers, and they have been utterly terrible for about a decade. This year, they lost by more than five touchdowns. Their involvement in Thanksgiving football each year is based only on tradition, and I think it is one tradition the National Football League could do without.

SI's Peter King In The Mouth Of The Echo Chamber

It is fortunate that Sports Illustrated has Peter King and Paul Zimmerman, the two best football writers now working. Their writing is enriched by the personality they bring to their columns. In reading the former, I have learned about the highs and lows of raising two daughters while regularly travelling from New Jersey to cover the National Football League; in reading the latter, I have learned how a shared love of good wines can keep together a gridiron curmugeon and his long-suffering, red-headed artist/wife. I have also learned a tremedous amount about football. These two gentlemen never let their personal lives, and personal opinions, overshadow their knowledge of the game, but it has been great to get to know the men behind the words over, say, the past decade or so.

It seems to me that Mr. King has suffered, however, during this interminable presidential election campaign in the United States. It is none of my business whether he is a registered Democrat, but I could draw a reasonable conclusion that he was not terribly disappointed that Barack Obama won the recent election, and if the United States is able to negotiate an orderly, honorable withdrawal from Iraq that allows us all to maintain some of the principles that took them there in the first place, I am pretty certain that Mr. King would raise a cheer. These positions, whether he holds them or not, are not unreasonable. What I find unreasonable, however, is that on the few occasions he has suggested that some change to the status quo might enrich the lives of all Americans, he has received for his trouble a deluge of correspondence from readers who want him to stick to football.

What rubbish.

These readers have profited from Mr. King's catholic interests, as well as his pragmatic judgment of everything from coffee to television programs. (I am dismayed only that he does not appear to be the rabid fan of Mad Men that I am!) Mr. King's columns are not political, nor should they be. But people who object to a sportswriter discussing how black NFL athletes responded to Mr. Obama's election are the kinds of people who enjoy the internet only because it allows them to restrict their reading to people who think exactly as they do.

Insofar as today's media has become a small series of echo chambers where our own thoughts can be communicated back to us, we are an impoverished people. So long as Peter King fills my Monday mornings with pages and pages of football information stuck together with the other stuff of American life, I will consider myself lucky.