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Monday, September 19, 2005 |
Why Peter Handrinos Hates Football
Amen. This has to rank up there with Kostner's speech in Bull Durham that ended, "I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."
I hate the fact that high school ball causes more than a dozen deaths and more than 400,000 serious injuries each and every year. To teenagers.It goes on. Man, what a rip!I hate that it’s such a brutal sport more than 100 players are out in any given week with shattered bones, ruined joints, ripped and frayed muscles, and bruised organs. And that an estimated two-thirds of all players leave the game with serious, lifelong injuries.
I hate the fact that players are using ever-more advanced weight training and undetectable steroids to train themselves as human missiles (and targets), thereby ensuring that the game only becomes more destructive and painful as time goes on.
I hate the trash-talk, casual cruelty, and indifference that comes along with inflicting and absorbing massive amounts of physical punishment on the field. And, no, I’m not shocked and amazed that an estimated 40% of all NFL players end up being charged with serious felonies like drug trafficking, domestic abuse, assault and battery, and even murder.
Comments:
Bleh. I hate baseball paundits ranting on football, and football people blasting "boreball." Football may be a metaphor for conflict/war, but baseball is a metaphor for management everywhere. Both are rather depressing in a real world context.
# posted by 
: 9/20/2005 10:13:00 AM
: 9/20/2005 10:13:00 AM
Baseball is beautiful because it's a team sport about individuals. "Team chemistry" and the like are all management double-speak, but it's a convenient way for writers to make the brilliance of individual players somehow more meaningful with the other players on the team. The sabremetrics vs. scouting/"humanistic" argument reflects how bureaucracies work. On the one hand, you have metrics and process schemes that try to describe a predictable outcome. Baseball now has quality assurance standards. On the other, you have subjective observations, mystical hoodoo and relationships that are used to explain away what just happened. Most writers would rather not think like their managers. Most managers think romancing the bottom line is immature. Leave it to blog culture to find a happy medium, while they're avoiding their real job. Heh heh. ;)
Football is beautiful because it's the sport nobody really understands. Therefore, it accomodates all sorts of interpretations and yet refutes them all. You can look at individual play and qualify it against statistical analysis. You can look at time management and ball position. You can try to break down exotic formations and schemes. But you will always be kinda wrong, and that makes football awesome! ;)
Football is beautiful because it's the sport nobody really understands. Therefore, it accomodates all sorts of interpretations and yet refutes them all. You can look at individual play and qualify it against statistical analysis. You can look at time management and ball position. You can try to break down exotic formations and schemes. But you will always be kinda wrong, and that makes football awesome! ;)
# posted by : 9/20/2005 11:19:00 AM
: 9/20/2005 11:19:00 AM
Football is too situation-dependent and has too few games for there to ever be meaningful statistical analysis of it.
From what I've read, most game planning week-to-week with coaches is actually based on statistical analysis. The modeling is extremely sophisticated (and unfortunately proprietary), and often it's whoever staff that does a better job at modeling their game data, often wins. Especially now in a parity league. Blitz schemes are often conceived with that in mind, picking out the tendencies in a formation or cover scheme and timing out average time it takes certain situations to arise. It's really fascinating.
# posted by : 9/20/2005 11:50:00 AM
: 9/20/2005 11:50:00 AM
It may be heavily stat dependent, but it's still brutal.
I used to like football, but a couple of years ago one of the teams in the playoffs was very successful with their strategy of "Injure the other team to the point where they're ineffective." I just couldn't stand that.
I used to like football, but a couple of years ago one of the teams in the playoffs was very successful with their strategy of "Injure the other team to the point where they're ineffective." I just couldn't stand that.
Quite frankly the idea that football -- even at the pro level -- is heavily based on numerical modeling sounds a lot like front office PR.
<< is heavily based on numerical modeling sounds a lot like front office PR. >>
I'm surprised you would find that controversial. Much of that is really a product of better technology, especially in being able to time how fast the opponent's QB makes a decision, the offensive line to produce a gap, how fast the WR goes, and so on. That in turn influences how the person will set up his blitz packages and zone coverages. Even something like ball and time management -- what to do if you have X lead with Y time -- is less based on a "coaching philosophy", than statistical evidence given a situation, formation or scheme. The reason why the league is considered "copy cat" is that, most of the game planning is spent on exposing weaknesses in current schemes. It's always been that way, but now parity makes game planning (specfically, the gathering and interpretation of data) 75% of the intended outcome for most teams. Basketball works more like football now, especially after the zone was made legal again, since it lets basketball coaches set up traps to push star players into low-percentage shots and high-rebound situations. Of course, it's killing basketball too.
Football and baseball are irreconcilably different, I guess. Baseball has a great player's union; football has a weak union. Baseball has no sense of time; football is won on time. Writers yap about mystique in baseball; same writers go on with technical jargon in football. Baseball trades on its past; football is addicted to instant gratification. Baseball loves moral dilemnas and traditions; football embraces decadence and excess. If they have something in common, it's that Americans love baseball and football, but don't play cricket or rugby.
<< It may be heavily stat dependent, but it's still brutal. >>
Yup, that it is. A journalist friend of mine says that football, seen live at ground-level, during the last 2-3 minutes, is actually frightening. The mix of velocity and size is not unlike watching cars crash into each other. Again and again. A professional hockey season is even more brutal.
But it's also fascinating looking at the advancements made in conditioning and exercise physiology due to football and hockey programs, which in turn trickle down to baseball, basketball, tennis, and other sports.
I'm surprised you would find that controversial. Much of that is really a product of better technology, especially in being able to time how fast the opponent's QB makes a decision, the offensive line to produce a gap, how fast the WR goes, and so on. That in turn influences how the person will set up his blitz packages and zone coverages. Even something like ball and time management -- what to do if you have X lead with Y time -- is less based on a "coaching philosophy", than statistical evidence given a situation, formation or scheme. The reason why the league is considered "copy cat" is that, most of the game planning is spent on exposing weaknesses in current schemes. It's always been that way, but now parity makes game planning (specfically, the gathering and interpretation of data) 75% of the intended outcome for most teams. Basketball works more like football now, especially after the zone was made legal again, since it lets basketball coaches set up traps to push star players into low-percentage shots and high-rebound situations. Of course, it's killing basketball too.
Football and baseball are irreconcilably different, I guess. Baseball has a great player's union; football has a weak union. Baseball has no sense of time; football is won on time. Writers yap about mystique in baseball; same writers go on with technical jargon in football. Baseball trades on its past; football is addicted to instant gratification. Baseball loves moral dilemnas and traditions; football embraces decadence and excess. If they have something in common, it's that Americans love baseball and football, but don't play cricket or rugby.
<< It may be heavily stat dependent, but it's still brutal. >>
Yup, that it is. A journalist friend of mine says that football, seen live at ground-level, during the last 2-3 minutes, is actually frightening. The mix of velocity and size is not unlike watching cars crash into each other. Again and again. A professional hockey season is even more brutal.
But it's also fascinating looking at the advancements made in conditioning and exercise physiology due to football and hockey programs, which in turn trickle down to baseball, basketball, tennis, and other sports.
# posted by : 9/20/2005 03:47:00 PM
: 9/20/2005 03:47:00 PMNewer› ‹Older
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