Tag: sports

Sanity prevails

AD will be back on the field on Sunday:

The Vikings gave Adrian Peterson the weekend off for damage control.

But now they’re falling back on due process.

The team just released a statement from owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf saying the All-Pro running back would fully participate in practices and meetings this week and is expected to play Sunday against the Saints.

It appears the NFL owners are beginning to grasp that reacting like Pavlov’s dogs to the Social Justice Warriors ringing a bell is not good for the game or for business. Now let’s see the NFL reinstate Ray Rice.

Peterson is not the problem

It’s remarkable that All Day is being lambasted by the very media that so often laments the fact that most black fathers pay no attention to their children, and in particular, their sons. Apparently it is much better for fathers to simply ignore their children and allow them to grow up feral than risk a single occasion of disciplining them too firmly.

Is this really the paternal incentive structure that makes any sense for society?

Peterson has been largely unapologetic and rightly so.  Yes, his four year old son was young, but he also has the same genetics that render his father an athletic freak of nature and it would not be at all surprising if the boy was similarly strong-minded as well. I tend to doubt that any son of Adrian Peterson is going to be much impressed by a single hand applied once or twice to his backside. Peterson may not the best father in the world, but he is clearly attempting to be a father to his various bastards and to raise them more or less correctly.

The problem America faces is not an excess of discipline, but rather, the exact opposite. It reminds me of the way in which the media obsessively worries about anorexia in a nation rife with obesity. Fathers like Peterson, who apply the rod more vigorously than some people would prefer, are part of the solution, not the problem, even if they go too far on occasion. Sparing the rod is straightforward parental negligence, far more damaging to a child in the end than any bruised backside.

If the NFL was genuinely concerned about the welfare of its players’ children, it would suspend the players who have no contact with their children, not those who discipline them harshly.

Fallout from the Rice debacle

Since Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely for one punch aimed at an adult woman, how can the NFL avoid indefinitely suspending All Day for “child abuse”:

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson will not play on Sunday against the Patriots after he was indicted on a charge of injury to a child. The Vikings announced the decision to deactivate Peterson on Friday, two hours after news broke that he had been indicted by a grand jury in Houston.

The move comes during the same week that the NFL has come under withering criticism stemming from the video showing Ravens running back Ray Rice beating up his wife. The Ravens released Rice and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.

It’s far too early to know whether the Vikings could release Peterson — a notion that would have been absolutely unthinkable a few hours ago — or whether the NFL could suspend him indefinitely. But in this week like no other in the NFL’s history, nothing can be ruled out.

This highlights the absolute absurdity of Goodell’s insane new standard. If they’re concerned about damage to the league, the number of people wearing Ray Rice jerseys at the recent Ravens game should give them a clue about how people will react to kicking a Hall of Fame running back out of the league in his prime.

And let’s face it, this “child abuse” is every bit as serious as the “domestic violence” of the Rice case:

According to the report, Peterson said he did it to punish the child for pushing another one of Peterson’s children while they were playing a video game. The report says Peterson grabbed a tree branch, removed the leaves and struck the 4-year-old repeatedly.

The child’s injuries reportedly included cuts and bruises to the child’s back, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the child’s hands. According to the report, Peterson texted the boy’s mother and acknowledged what he had done and that she would be “mad at me about his leg. I got kinda good wit the tail end of the switch.”

According to the report, the child told authorities, “Daddy Peterson hit me on my face” and said he feared Peterson would punch him in the face if he found out police knew about the incident.

Adrian Peterson shouldn’t be deactivated or suspended. Goodell had better reinstate Rice right quickly and then announce that it is not the NFL’s job to police its players’ domestic relations or he’s going to find himself accused of running a racist, predominantly white league sooner than anyone believes possible.

Also, fire Roger Goodell. His constant efforts to supplicate to the female non-fans is actually harming the league now.

The one-punch standard

The football world has been striking poses left, right, and center, pretending that Ray Rice is the Second Coming of OJ Simpson. The Ravens released him and are giving out free jerseys in exchange for his old ones, the ever-sanctimonious Roger Goodell added an indefinite suspension on top of the previous two-game suspension, and various players and commentators are ritually denouncing him.

And for what? A single punch.

This is absolutely and utterly absurd. There are punches thrown in NFL games and practices every single week. If the NFL were to apply the one-punch standard consistently, half the African players would be out of the league by the end of the season.

This is not to say that Ray Rice is a good guy. If you watch the video closely, it looks like he does something to provoke her in some way at the elevator buttons. It almost looks as if he spits at her, she shoves him, he shoves back, and then she charges him and gets KO’d. We’re clearly not dealing with a pair of innocent angels here.

But here is the salient point. He’s not “beating her up”. He’s not abusing her. He’s not attacking her. In fact, the reason she got knocked out isn’t because he’s a big strong man, but because she was rushing at him. What he threw was clearly a defensive punch, and quite likely an instinctive one. I’ve been knocked out in much the same way while sparring, by walking directly into the sort of jab that one normally wouldn’t even feel. Remember, F=MA, so while Rice has a fair amount of Mass, a significant part of the Acceleration that provided the knockout force came from her rushing towards him.

There is a reason the prosecutor saw fit to allow Rice to avoid trial, most likely because there is considerably more than a reasonable doubt involved. One never knows with the inaptly named U.S. “justice” system, but it is highly unlikely that Rice would have been convicted of the one count of third-degree aggravated assault with which he was charged. To call his one-punch KO an assault, or even abuse, is to insult the men and women who are genuinely assaulted and abused. While ignorant people only look at the effect of Mrs. Rice crumpling to the ground, anyone with fighting experience is looking at how she rushed at him, how he retreated to the side of the elevator, and how he didn’t step into the punch or snap his hips. The police appear to have taken notice of these things as well.

“After reviewing surveillance footage it appeared both parties were
involved in a physical altercation,” read the Atlantic City Police
report.”

Lest you forget, intent matters greatly with regards to the law, and there is absolutely no indication that Ray Rice entered that elevator with any intent to harm his fiance or that he had any intent to do more than keep her off him when she rushed him. In fact, the only party that is seriously harming his fiance, now his wife, is the NFL, as Roger Goodell is depriving her husband of his ability to support her. That will certainly have more long-term negative effects on her than thirty seconds of unconsciousness did.

I see this as nothing more than pink shoes in October. It’s just another aspect of Commissioner Goodell’s clumsy and misguided attempt to market the league to women. Ask yourself this: how many of you, male or female, would still have your job if you were held to the one-punch standard being applied to Ray Rice?

Homophobia in the NFL!

The evil, homophobic Jeff Fisher, who probably belongs to the KKK, and the evil, homophobic St. Louis Rams cut the greatest lineman ever to be drafted by the NFL, no doubt because they hate progress:

The St. Louis Rams released defensive end Michael Sam on Saturday, the team announced. Sam’s efforts to become the first openly gay player in NFL history came up just short in a competition against undrafted rookie Ethan Westbrooks.

Also, VPFL managers, please post your keepers here in the comments. Don’t forget that the draft is tomorrow.

What is this, hockey?

Ender came home from soccer practice the other day with mixed news. On the plus side, he was the youngest player to make the team at the elite level for which he is now eligible. Most of the players from his last year’s team are now out of the sport or transferring to lesser clubs. On the downside, he reported that he’d lost his first fight, although besides being slightly wild-eyed he didn’t look any the worse for wear to me.

I don’t tend to get worked up over the occasional fracas since there is a definite “boys will be boys” attitude here, but I was furious when he told me the details, as he was jumped before practice by a bigger kid two years older, who kicked him in the face from behind while Ender was passing the ball back-and-forth with a teammate. A second kid, also older, then grabbed him around the neck when he whirled around and tried to hold him back for the first kid to punch. Ender took a few shots to the face and got a bloody nose out of it, but in the process he managed to bloody the first kid’s nose by kicking him in the face, and messed up the second kid’s leg by raking his shin and kicking his knee with his heel.

The kid with whom Ender had been passing the ball tried to intervene, but was flattened for his trouble, until finally the star of the team, who is more than a bit of an athletic specimen, jumped in and punched the two kids off Ender to break things up. The strange thing is that the two kids are new to the club and Ender didn’t know either of them. So, my suspicion is that they were trying to assert themselves by picking on the youngest kid, who unfortunately carries himself with misleading body language that tends to lead aggressors to believe he is an easier target than is in fact the case. Alternatively, there are some girls who have made it eminently clear that they like him, and I’m wondering if that might have something to do with it.

Anyhow, as I pointed out, it was much more of a draw than a loss, because the second kid’s knee was too badly hurt to permit him to practice, so he went home, and then after practice, the first kid challenged Ender in front of the others, then, when Ender indicated his willingness to reopen hostilities on equal terms, backed down. Besides being fairly tough after three years of judo, Ender is now as tall as I am, and while he doesn’t have much mass to him yet, the kid is ripped. However, he doesn’t have much in the way of strike training yet, which is an oversight I intend to rectify.

Ender was vastly amused, however, by my initial reaction, as well as the reaction of the two Dragons I told about it, as we were uniformly focused on the tactical situation. Besides ambuscades and kicking high, the kid apparently likes to grab the neck with his left, pull his victim forward, and then throw punches with his right hand. So, we went over obliquing and arm bars, as well as the catch, lift, and twist routine for dealing with kickers. If the kid does manage to close, rather than trying to pull away, move in, cover up with one elbow, and work the ribs until he pulls away, then switch to elbows and knees. It’s with some difficulty that I’m going to leave matters up to Ender at his request rather than complain to the club, but if the kid is dumb enough to attack Ender again, I very much doubt he’s coming out of it without a broken arm and possibly a few broken ribs.

One of the hard things as a father is learning when you can step in and take care of a problem for your son and when you have to step back and let him take care of his own business. As much as I’d love to put the fear of me into the little bastard (as in The Dark Knight and “SWEAR TO ME”) and I have no doubt that I could, I have to step back here.

Now, I think turning the other cheek is important. I have even done it on occasion, once when I was perfectly within my rights to break the other individual’s jaw. And Ender has been very good about making peace with past assailants; he’s quite friendly now with the oversized kid who caused him trouble last season. But there is a time for peace and there is a time for war. This would appear to be one of the latter.

On a happier note, Ender is beginning his professional refereeing career this weekend, and I’ll have the opportunity to be there since my team will be one of the two sides playing. I have already explained to him that it is bad form, and more than a little unwise, to blow the offsides whistle on any attacking player who has the power to decide the referee’s bedtime.

It’s good to be back

I know that my time on the soccer field is growing shorter. I’m the second-oldest man on the veteran’s team, and the other guy is only a few months older. I think both of us have survived because we have the benefit of relatively fresh knees, I missed 10 years of playing after high school, plus three years more years after an old groin injury flared up, while he didn’t play for nearly 20 years before getting back into the sport.

The fall season started tonight, and it was my best first practice I’ve ever had. Knowing that we’d be getting some new guys who are 14 years younger, I figured I’d better get myself in prime shape if I wanted to hang onto my starting spot. So, I barely missed a workout this summer, added a leg day to the schedule, and made sure to run at least once a week on the treadmill. By last week, I was able to do a 40-minute run with a constant elevation that burned over a thousand calories and still have something left.

When I went to the field, I discovered that the coaches decided we’d have a scrimmage between the vets and the first team. We had more vets, and since my Dutch friend and I were already wearing blue, we were sent to play with the first team. And damn, they were GOOD on the ball. I actually got the first shot, which I put wide, and I managed to keep up with their tiki-taka on the rare occasions they passed it to me instead of pushing it forward, pulling it back, spinning around, and going between two vets. For the most part, I was a spectator, which was fine with me. I was just happy that my occasional passes hit the target.

But my real teammates have been doing this for a LONG time. They dealt with all the flashy ball skills by using their heavier weight to knock the kids around and taking advantage of the young guys typical failure to stay back on defense. They actually scored the first three goals, so I switched back to defense and that helped shut them down. I know how our guys play, I’m faster than most of them, and our rapid counterattacks eventually tired them out. After 90 minutes, they’d only scored twice more and we’d scored seven or eight.

At one point, I brought the ball up from the back and somehow managed to beat four guys in succession before passing off, but the best part was when I saw one young midfielder less than half my age bending over and holding his knees. I laughed at him as I jogged back into position; he looked at me in disbelief and shook his head. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can’t play seriously at their level; their intensity, quickness, and energy is considerably more than I can match. They are in constant motion whereas I have to play a position game and choose my bursts. But it’s rather nice to know that they can’t blow me off the field yet.

Calcio is life

Every so often, David Brooks can be insightful. This sports analogy may help put things in perspective for people who often find themselves frustrated that life does not go the way they expect it to:

Most of us spend our days thinking we are playing baseball, but we are really playing soccer. We think we individually choose what career path to take, whom to socialize with, what views to hold. But, in fact, those decisions are shaped by the networks of people around us more than we dare recognize….

Once we acknowledge that, in life, we are playing soccer, not baseball, a few things become clear. First, awareness of the landscape of reality is the highest form of wisdom. It’s not raw computational power that matters most; it’s having a sensitive attunement to the widest environment, feeling where the flow of events is going. Genius is in practice perceiving more than the conscious reasoning.

Second, predictive models will be less useful. Baseball is wonderful for sabermetricians. In each at bat there is a limited range of possible outcomes. Activities like soccer are not as easily renderable statistically, because the relevant spatial structures are harder to quantify.

Everyone knows connections and networks and friends and family are more important to success than raw ability and hard work. And yet, that recognition offends most of us. It seems unfair somehow. But why? We see examples in every aspect of human endeavor. Even Michael Jordan didn’t become a champion by scoring 63 points a game, he achieved more when he scored 30 and relied on Scottie Pippen and his other teammates to help him win the game.

The coach of my Nike team once asked me how it was that I scored a goal in every game that season, regardless of whether the team we played against was good or bad, whereas my more talented strike partner would tend to score three goals against the bad teams and get regularly shut out by the good ones. I pointed out that the other striker’s goals were almost always brilliant individual efforts that involved beating two or three defenders on the dribble. Mine were almost always one- or two-touch shots that relied upon getting a well-placed pass from a midfielder, often my younger brother.

And while the other striker was a gifted player from Ireland who could dribble right past two or three lesser defenders, he wasn’t gifted enough to beat two or three good ones in succession. For me, on the other hand, it made little difference if the defenders were good or bad, because as long as the midfielder passed the ball into the open space past the last defender, I was going to run right past them. When the defense was tough, a little teamwork reliably trumped considerably superior individual talent.

The lesson of soccer is that individual effort will often suffice when things are relatively easy. But in order to surmount the more difficult challenges, you will almost always need reliable teammates of one sort or another.

Germany v Argentina

It may not be the Brazil v Spain clash of the titans most were anticipating at the start of the tournament, but it’s a very interesting matchup nonetheless. Germany has clearly demonstrated it has the best team in the World Cup, while Argentina has, not quite so clearly, demonstrated that it has, if not the best, one of the best individual players in the tournament.

The case for Germany: Argentina is exhausted. Messi is exhausted. Two of their best players, di Maria and Mascheranno, are less than 100 percent. Several teams, including Holland, have demonstrated that Messi can be kept in check by an aggressive midfield. Germany is well-rested, confident, and injury-free. Lowe has shown that he can select the right rosters and make the right tactical substitutions during the game.

The case for Argentina. Messi. It’s a quasi-home game. And as far as the narrative goes, it would make the final an all-time epic if Messi was somehow able to lead Argentina over the heavily favored Germans; Argentina is 2.5-to-1 underdog.

Conclusion: There is no way Germany doesn’t win. It won’t go to penalties. It won’t go to extra time. I expect Germany to come out strong and to attempt to crush the Argentine spirit early. Holland tried to play conservative and outlast the Albiceleste, and it didn’t work out well for them. Die Mannschaft won’t make the same mistake. Germany 3-0.

GERMANY 0 ARGENTINA 0 Argentina has done very well to take the game to extra time. They have Germany right where they want them, in fact, if Higuina could simply put his shots on goal, they would have already won. Messi, too, has missed one very good opportunity. Argentina’s lack of finishing has been dreadful; it seems that more than half their shots have gone wide. But in Kadir’s absence, Germany has been playing too conservatively, Ozil has been a nonentity again, and I have no idea what Lowe was thinking by playing the 36-year old Klose for 85 minutes instead of taking him out 10 minutes after halftime.