Tag: sports

The NFL flags hate speech

Does anyone in the league office ever actually spend time around the players or pay attention to how they talk? It should be interesting to watch NFL games with half the black players sent to the sidelines by the end of the first quarter. Or perhaps theleague can come up with a policy that permits black players to call each other “nigger” while penalizing white players. Which raises the question; will multiracial players like Russell Wilson only be penalized five yards?

The NFL may implement a new rule this offseason calling for 15-yard penalties for any players who use racial slurs on the field. John Wooten, head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told CBS Sports that he expects the league to make it an automatic 15-yard penalty if a player uses the N-word on the field, and an automatic ejection for a player who does it twice.

“I will be totally shocked if the competition committee does not uphold us on what we’re trying to do,” Wooten said. “We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room. Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”

You would swear this was a parody, but perhaps the wags who predicted that the NFL would devolved to flag football with penalty flags thrown for making other players feel bad weren’t so far off after all.

And it’s fascinating to observe that they are quite willing to set themselves up as the speech police.

The Age Monster

It gets everyone eventually. We can train, we can eat right, we can think positive thoughts, but every year that passes, the opponents get younger, the pains get sharper, and the effort gets more strenuous.

Yeah, we had our first soccer practice of the year last night.

It actually went surprisingly well, mostly because I’ve been running 40 minutes twice a week over the offseason in preparation for a season at right wing. My side played a man down in the scrimmage, but I was arguably, (no, definitely), the worst player on my side and I was able to shut down the best player on the other side. This is a decided advantage.

I mostly hung back, with occasional sprints forward when the other team wasn’t looking and managed to score our first goal that way. More importantly, it took the new guy, who was, in the immortal words of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 3, “a handful”, a while to learn to respect the lingering remnants of my speed, so he kept trying to blow past me to no avail. And when he switched to trying to use his vastly superior ball skills to fake me out, I simply refused to commit, thereby forcing him to finally pass off after my teammates were already back on defense.

So old age and experience really can overcome youth and skill. And a little treachery combined with upper body strength doesn’t hurt either. After practice was over, the new guy came over and introduced himself. He looked a little surprised to discover that he was 20 years younger. It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, to be sure, but these days, I’ll take it. It’s certainly better than the alternative.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to win a regular starting position again this year or not, but the initial omens appear to be good. We crushed the other half of the squad despite playing a man down the whole time, so that should help. I know that in our captain’s eyes, reliability tends to trump talent.

Battling the new guy to a draw reminded me of our indoor tournament the week before, which was the most fun I’ve ever had at a soccer tournament. 12 teams were invited, good teams, including all three of our primary rivals. We figured we would probably finish fourth of six in our group, with the possibility of a shot at third. The tournament went until after midnight, with copious beer flowing throughout the course of the evening.

The first game was easy. We won 3-1, but it should have been 6-1. I got the third goal when S picked me out and rifled a pass right to the corner of the goal; I just had to stick out my foot and deflect it in. The second game was my best; it was against the team that has been my personal bete noire, but I got two goals and we put them away 3-1 as well. Then we played our derby game, which was incredibly annoying because despite dominating the ball, we somehow managed to lose 3-2.

So, it looked like third-place group finish was in the cards, and that’s when things got exciting. We destroyed the fourth team 6-0, then watched as they played our neighbors without much hope of them scoring an upset. But their best player was the coach of our first team squad, and he ripped off an early goal from 25 meters that briefly would have put us in second place. Then our neighbors came back and took the 2-1 lead that they held until the last minute. The other team got a goal to tie it with 50 seconds left, but a tie didn’t do us any good since we knew we probably couldn’t beat our arch rivals, who have supplanted us as the league’s dominant team, in the final game.

However, with 11 seconds left, the ball was passed back to the coach, who was nearly the entire length of the indoor field from the goal. He pushed it forward a step, picked his spot, and put it right in the upper corner for the win with three seconds left. Phenomenal shot. The entire gymnasium went nuts. The upset meant that we were guaranteed second place in the group, and first if we could beat our rivals.

Unfortunately, we lost 3-1. But it was a good, hard-fought game, and there was a funny moment after the young Serie B ref, who is a friendly acquaintance of mine, told me before the game that I couldn’t stop him. About halfway through, he had the ball on the left side I was defending, and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was zero chance he was going to pass the ball. Despite my best efforts, he did manage to turn on me, but I kept just enough shoulder on him to force his shot wide of the goal. He laughed, offered a high-five, and decided we could call it a draw as his teammates shouted at him for not passing the ball.

That is precisely what I will miss most about competitive sports when the time finally comes to hang up my soccer boots for the last time. The competition. The physical testing. The going head-to-head to find out who is better. And the mutual respect that so often results from the process. Whether one wins or one loses, it is the battle, not the result, from which the pleasure is derived. I’ve won league and conference championships. I’ve coached a team that never won a single game. But the teams I remember most fondly aren’t necessarily the championship teams, they are the teams that never stopped competing until the final whistle blew, no matter what the score.

The Age Monster will get me in the end. I know that. I accept that. The time will come when the young guys will blow right past me, when their speed and power will be simply too much to handle. But I am going to keep that bastard at bay as long as I can, and I will keep playing as long as I can help my team win.

Women in combat: a prelude

The Sochi Winter Olympics are providing a useful service in demonstrating the complete absurdity of the woman warrior meme:

Sarka Pancochova, a Czech snowboarder, led the slopestyle event after the first run. On her second trip down the course of obstacles and jumps, she flew through the air, performed a high-arcing, spinning trick and smacked her head upon landing. Her limp body spun like a propeller into the gully between jumps and slid to a stop.

Pancochova was soon on her feet, and the uneasy crowd cheered. Her helmet was cracked nearly in half, back to front. She was one of the lucky ones, seemingly O.K., but her crash last week was indicative of a bigger issue: a messy collage of violent wipeouts at these Olympics. Most of the accidents have occurred at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the site of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events like halfpipe, slopestyle and moguls.

And most of the injuries have been sustained by women….

The Winter Games have always had dangerous events. But the Extreme Park,
as the name suggests, is built on the ageless allure of danger. All of
the events there have been added to the Olympic docket since 1992, each a
tantalizing cocktail of grace and peril.But
unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk, including Alpine
skiing, luge and ski jumping, there are few concessions made for women.

For both sexes, the walls of the halfpipe are 22 feet tall. The
slopestyle course has the same tricky rails and the same huge jumps. The
course for ski cross and snowboard cross, a six-person race to the
finish over jumps and around icy banked curves, is the same for men and
women. The jumps for aerials are the same height. The bumps in moguls
play no gender favorites.

“Most
of the courses are built for the big show, for the men,” said Kim
Lamarre of Canada, the bronze medalist in slopestyle skiing, where the
competition was delayed a few times by spectacular falls. “I think they
could do more to make it safer for women.”

Compare
the sports with downhill skiing, in which women have their own course,
one that is shorter and less difficult to navigate. Or luge, in which
female sliders start lower on the track than the men. Or ski jump, in
which women were finally allowed to participate this year, but only on
the smaller of the two hills. The Olympics have a history — sexist,
perhaps — of trying to protect women from the perils of some sports.

But equality reigns at the Extreme Park, even to the possible detriment of the female participants.

Actually, equality doesn’t reign. Because the inferior and uncompetitive female athletes don’t compete against the superior men. But the young women are such stupid herd animals that they will literally kill themselves in their incoherent denial.

“I see it every contest,” Cusson said. “Unless they are forced to hit
the smaller side, the best ones will always go for the bigger jumps.
They want to prove to everybody that they are capable. And then all the
other girls will follow.”

As usual, the end result of feminism is more dead and injured women. If one simply judges by the consequences, it should be obvious that feminists hate women far more passionately than even the most virulent misogynist.

They can’t even compete in competitive leisure pastimes without half-killing themselves and requiring surgery, but they’re going to hold their own in combat, where the enemy is actually trying to harm them?

Hall of Fame 2014

Canton makes room for seven more:

Giants defensive end Michael Strahan led a seven-member class into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Saturday. First-ballot eligible Seahawks tackle Walter Jones and Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks joined Strahan among the modern era finalists, along with Cardinals and Rams cornerback Aeneas Williams and Bills wide receiver Andre Reed.

The two seniors committee candidates, Raiders punter Ray Guy and Falcons and Eagles defensive end Claude Humphrey were also elected

I don’t see how Strahan got in before Charles Haley. I don’t think there is a coach alive who would take Strahan over Haley, but Strahan is Big Media while Haley is, to put it mildly, an unusual guy. Ray Guy is more of a symbol than anything, so I don’t really have a problem with that. It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Statistics, after all, and if you’re going to name a punter from back in the day, he’s the first one you think of.

I’m glad to see Reed get in over Brown. I never thought all that much of Brown while he was playing and certainly never worried about him.  Not an exciting class, but not a problematic one either. Jerome Bettis shouldn’t get in, neither should Marvin Harrison. Both good players, but neither of them were great.

Super Bowl XLVIII

So, I’m told there is a game today. And, let’s face it, this is the matchup most fans of the game wanted to see. If Peyton Manning is going to cement a legacy as a champion, rather than a choker, it’s much more interesting to see him try to do it against the best defense in the NFL.

Historically, the best defense has defeated the best offense. Defense wins championships and all that. So, one has to lean towards the Seahawks on that basis, I think. While DVOA has Denver as the top offense and Seattle as the best defense, it also shows the Seattle offense (7) being better than Denver’s defense (15). Russell Wilson hasn’t looked great in the playoffs, but the San Francisco defense was capable of making anyone look average and the New Orleans defense was much improved over the disaster of the year before.

As I’ve said several times over the course of the playoffs, I haven’t seen a defense intimidate wide receivers like this Seattle defense since the 2000 Ravens. If Manning can get Welker working across the middle early, that will be the sign that Denver can solve the Seattle secondary. If not, well, we may be seeing the same alligator arms we saw in the NFC Championship game.

And if you’re one of those commenters who feels the need to inform us that you’re not interested in the NFL every single freaking time those of us who are interested in the sport are discussing it, just go away already. Neither I nor anyone else cares about what you do or don’t like. Deal with it.

It’s not broken, so why not fix it?

The NFL playoffs this year were exciting. The best teams advanced to the Super Bowl. Naturally, this doesn’t prevent the meddlers from insisting on “improving” things. Unfortunately, it turns out that one of those inveterate meddlers is the NFL Commisioner:

“We currently have 12 teams qualify for the playoffs, as you know. We are looking at the idea of expanding that by two teams to 14,” Goodell said at his State of the League press conference. “There’s a lot of benefits to doing that. We think we can make the league more competitive. We think we can make the matchups more competitive towards the end of the season. There will be more excitement, more memorable moments for our fans. That’s something that attracts us. We think we can do it properly from a competitive standpoint.

And then the complaints will start that the #1 seed has too much of an advantage, so two more teams need to be allowed in. The crazy thing is that the people whining about the need for seeding have been complaining about 8-8 teams making the playoffs, but adding more teams is only going to increase the likelihood of that happening. 

Faith is positive contagion

The atheist Peter Boghossian, to whose anti-apologetics I have been responding, likes to claim that he is mystified by how faith can be beneficial. But again and again, across a wide range of disciplines from medicine to sports, we see that “pretending to know what you don’t know” is materially beneficial to the faith-filled individual. From Grantland:

Anyone who plays sports understands this phenomenon. We want to use the same clubs, shoes, balls, bats, and everything else as the pros because they’re the best, and we want to give ourselves every chance to play as well as them. It’s as much about confidence as it is quality equipment.

This isn’t just common sense — social scientists have actually studied how using “professional” gear affects amateurs’ performance. In 2011, researchers at the University of Virginia laid out a putting mat, a ball, and a putter, and invited 41 undergraduates to take part in an experiment. The students were asked to do two things: Take 10 test putts and then try to draw the hole to scale. Half were told nothing about the putter’s origins. The rest were told it once belonged to a PGA Tour player. You already know what happened next. The students who thought they were using a pro’s club sank more putts and drew the hole larger than the control group. The social scientists running the experiment must have known that what they were witnessing was pure superstition. How else to describe the process by which years of practice and skill can be transmitted from an expert to an amateur through the simple transfer of an object? But because they’re academics, they use a different term — positive contagion.

Thus the Magic Putter refutes the false claim of the inutility of faith, even faith as incorrectly defined by the atheist. What the academic philosopher Peter Boghossian has clearly never mastered is a simple and intrinsically scientific concept: Let reason be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions.

Richard Sherman on the NFC Championship

I have no problem with his “outrageous” post-game interview. I wish more NFL players would simply say what they think. He’s a very good player, and like Sherman, I still can’t believe Kaepernick chose that moment, of all moments, to throw in his direction:

Erin Andrews interviewed me after the game and I yelled what was obvious: If you put a subpar player across from a great one, most of the time you’re going to get one result. As far as Crabtree being a top-20 NFL receiver, you’d have a hard time making that argument to me. There are a lot of receivers playing good ball out there, and Josh Gordon needed 14 games to produce almost double what Crabtree can do in a full season. And Gordon had Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer and Jason Campbell playing quarterback.

But that’s not why I don’t like the man. It goes back to something he said to me this offseason in Arizona, but you’d have to ask him about that. A lot of what I said to Andrews was adrenaline talking, and some of that was Crabtree. I just don’t like him.

It was loud, it was in the moment, and it was just a small part of the
person I am. I don’t want to be a villain, because I’m not a villainous
person. When I say I’m the best cornerback in football, it’s with a
caveat: There isn’t a great defensive backfield in the NFL that doesn’t
have a great front seven. Everything begins with pressure up front, and
that’s what we get from our pass rushers every Sunday. To those who
would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football
field—don’t judge a person’s character by what they do between the
lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his
community, what he does for his family.

I very much like the way he came out, refused to apologize or back down, and simply explained why he did what he did. Like him or hate him, approve or disapprove, Richard Sherman leaves one with no doubt that he is a man. How few men these days have the courage to avoid the passive-aggressive shots and simply state, in a forthright manner: I just don’t like him.

I’m no Seahawks fan, but I sure wouldn’t mind it if the Vikings had gotten him in the Percy Harvin trade.

Championship Weekend

Patriots vs Broncos. The Broncos are at home, but I tend to like Brady and Belichick over Manning and Fox. Even though the Broncos are at home and they gave up 25 less yards rushing per game than the Colts.

San Francisco vs Seattle. Both teams have nasty defenses and mobile quarterbacks, but I think Seattle is the better team despite the 49ers having better receiving options. This game is going to be a hard-hitting war like the old Ravens-Steelers games and the team that hits harder is going to win. I think the Seahawks secondary is going to neutralize the 49ers receiving advantage and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaepernick doesn’t finish the game.

Hands off the kiddies, please

Vladimir Putin extends a warm Russian welcome to the Lavender Brigade:

Russian President Vladimir Putin says gays should feel welcome at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, but they must ‘leave the children in peace’. Mr Putin told volunteers today that gays visiting Sochi ‘can feel calm and at ease,’ and vowed that there would be no discrimination at the games. But he emphasised that, according to a law banning homosexual ‘propaganda’ among minors, gays cannot express their views on gay rights issues to anyone under age.

First, I don’t see how this can possibly be a problem for anyone who isn’t a pedophile. I mean, let’s face it, if you’re a middle-aged homosexual actively lobbying to lower the age of consent, you’re a pedo.

Second, is anyone really surprised that the former head of the KGB doesn’t recognize First Amendment rights?