The Problem With David

If David and Goliath had fought a series of 16, or 38, or 82, or 162 contests, do you really think David would have won every time?

Here's the problem with sports and the question of parity--the little guys can pull off a Cinderella moment in a one-off encounter or a short run through the NCAA tournaments, but over the course of the season, the big guys tend to win out. Look at soccer, for example. Teams like Manchester City, the nouveau riche of the Premier League, have such depth of talent that they can withstand the rigors of a long season, letting stars rest, and can overcome red card suspensions or injuries more easily than smaller clubs. It isn't that they are inherently better as a club, or at least that is not the only reason; they also have more resources.

The resource question is important. Newcastle United started off the season brilliantly, but are now running into some trouble. They lost to Man City three weeks ago, which was not unexpected, then managed to secure a controversial draw with Man United. Last week, fickle fate attacked. Chelsea's defender David Luiz should have been sent off in the fourth minute for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity, but escaped with a yellow card. That could have changed the entire match, and Chelsea went on to win 3-0. Even worse, Newcastle's star defender Steven Taylor was lost for the year. The media implied that now Newcastle will have to scramble for points the rest of the way to ensure safety, that being the only realistic option.

Today's match indicated this might be the case. Traveling to Norwich, Newcastle were thumped 4-2, having Dan Gosling sent off for a red card. I'm not too familiar with Norwich, but I would say that if Newcastle had serious ambitions of qualifying for Europe this year, Norwich is exactly the sort of team that Newcastle must beat.

It's funny how quickly results can turn. The small teams, the Cinderella stories, tend to fade away over the course of a long season. I was reading World Soccer the other night, in which articles were raving about the surprising starts of promoted Novara in the Italian Serie A and Real Betis and Levante in Spain's La Liga. I do get the magazine a bit late, as it comes all the way from England. This was the magazine on sale in October that I got in November. After reading the articles, I checked the standings, and all three teams had slipped wayyy down the tables. And look at the story of Blackpool last year in the Premier League: they came racing out of the gates as the darlings of the media, playing attractive soccer and getting some great results. But then, things started to not go their way, and they faded, and they ended up with relegation back to the lower division and lost their star Charlie Adam to Liverpool.

The Cinderella teams in the short tournaments become the Flavor of the Week in a long season. Big teams that start slowly--such as Arsenal this season--do recover. Dust tends to settle and cream rises to the top, which is the problem at the heart of the question of competitive parity: there is too much dust, not enough cream to go around. Any chef will tell you it is crucial to get the dust-to-cream ratio just right.

How do you ensure parity without relying too much on artificial restrictions? That's a problem that none of the major professional sports have really figured out once and for all. Salary caps help, so the NFL is ahead of a lot of the others, I would say. Baseball, for instance. Small-market teams benefit from revenue sharing, but that doesn't mean they can or will spend money, and it isn't entirely clear how legitimate some of the claims of necessary frugality from teams like the Pirates and the Marlins really are, especially in light of the Marlins splashing around cash on free agents this off-season like a kid doing a cannonball into a pool. And then you have the Angels owner, Arte Moreno, attacking the Yankees and Red Sox for doling out massive contracts, only to turn around and spend $250 million to lure Albert Pujols away from St. Louis. And in Spain, it never feels like there is a genuine chance for anyone other than Barcelona or Real Madrid to win the championship. The last team to do so was Valencia in the 2003-2004 season, which in the age of Twitter is so long ago that, realistically, it never happened. Is there a solution?

Michel Platini's Financial Fair Play movement seems a good first step to prevent the biggest clubs from taking on massive, destabilizing debt to outspend all comers and monopolize the best talent. There are loopholes, and we will have to wait to see how this works, but I like it in theory. Of course, just because a team is spending within its' means doesn't ensure parity, as some teams are meaner than others. I mean, they have more means than other teams.

Maybe this is just evolution, survival of the fitter, in terms of competition for resources. Maybe this is just a by-product of free-market capitalism or some other similar economic terms. Is the question of fairness in sports simply a myth? We talk about how there is always hope for any team at the start of the season, but it doesn't seem realistic. Without hope, what's the point of playing the games?

Of course, there would be no point, because, yes, things can happen that are unexpected. The Giants were not expected to win the World Series in 2010, and the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox all failed to win it last year.

I would hope for more idealism in sports, even in the financial side. I know it is a business, but I would hope that results in sports would be primarily based on more than the bottom line. I think this is why I would much rather the 49ers stayed in SF, built a new stadium in Hunter's Point--which could attract business and jobs to that area--rather than fleeing to the suburban comforts of Santa Clara and a parking lot next to the Great America theme park. Spread the joy and resources, I tell you, even if Santa Clara can offer you more revenue. Santa Clara and Silicon Valley have a lot of resources as it is. But that's not going to happen. The Niners will go to Silicon Valley, and when they do, I'm done with them. Not that they would care.

The reality is that life isn't fair, so maybe sports don't have to be entirely fair either, even if they are supposed to be a sublimation for our frustrations with the unfairness of life. To paraphrase Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes, not John Calvin), the world seems to rarely be unfair in our favor. Still, just because reality is unfair, that is no reason not to try leveling the pitch for all parties. I just have no idea how to do so.

When Business And Sports Collide

Some days, the news delivers all sorts of sports gold. Yesterday and today were just like that, and fittingly for a blog that starts with a mention of gold, I will write about the intersection of sports and business.

1) One of the latest Twitter scandals comes to us from Ohio University--note this is NOT Ohio State University, but the other one. Apparently the punter for Ohio University got into so much hot water over a derogatory remark about Idaho that he canceled his Twitter account. I'm not going to argue whether that is appropriate or not, given that derogatory remarks about Idaho/North Dakota constituted the basis for an entire system of humor in Montana. The lesson I learned from this story is that there is apparently a Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, which means there is a new champion of the Most Ludicrous Name For A College Bowl Game contest.

I also find it funny, yet all too perfectly appropriate, that this is the bowl game that used to be the Humanitarian Bowl. There is, after all, less profit in humanitarianism than there is in potatoes.

2) The NHL is considering realignment of the league. Realignment is always kind of odd. In baseball, for instance: the Brewers moving to the National League? I'm only now accepting that, and I dread trying to adjust to the Astros playing in the AL West.

For the NHL, certain realignment decisions would make sense. For instance, the Winnipeg Jets are currently playing in the Eastern Conference's Southeast Division, which only makes sense when you recall that this incarnation of the Jets was formerly known as the Atlanta Thrashers until this season. Realignment makes a lot of sense, commercially, in that it can create more logical rivalries if done right. Rivalries equal money.

There are many other factors in deciding what teams go where; teams that have to travel great distances currently will be in favor; other teams will resent the extra travel and extra expense if they must travel further. A lot will also depend on if the Phoenix Coyotes move to Quebec, which would be great! Much as I missed the name Winnipeg Jets--because that is a name that just screams hockey--I also miss the Quebec Nordiques and the Hartford Whalers, for no other reason than that they were teams in the league when I was first paying attention to sports, and I never authorized any changes.

Not that I pay much attention to hockey. It's too hard to follow the puck on TV. Still, I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

The NHL also seems to be heading for a possible collective bargaining showdown, based on a report in Forbes magazine arguing that the NHL needs to find a balance of revenue sharing between players and owners similar to the recent NBA agreement that reduced revenues going to players/employees. You know when Forbes is writing about sports, it's not writing about the sport side of sports.

If there is a protracted discussion on this, I hope the NHL learns the lessons the NBA should also learn; if there is a strike, a lot of us won't care. A good way to proactively prevent an exodus? Restore the Nordiques and the Whalers, and get rid of the Nashville team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and any of the other bland teams I can never remember because they are newfangled corporate franchises, not rooted in a history dating back at least as far as my childhood.

Because it's all about me, even when I don't watch the NHL regularly.

3) On a more somber note, in discussing the collective bargaining issue, I find it interesting--and sad--that the New York Times featured in the same paper the first in a three part series on an NHL enforcer who died of an overdose recently, apparently the victim of addictions that arose from a career based on fighting. Fighting is a part of the business of hockey. It draws in fans. It's not part of the sport. It's the 'entertainment' side that appeals to a different portion of the mind. And it's another reason I've never been drawn to hockey too much, nor MMA. To make a career out of sacrificing your body, that's a hard thing, though not unknown in the broader society. Look at coal miners.

It's stories like these that transform one's perception of sports from the mythical purity of history to the business side of the game. Is it even possible anymore to really lose one's self in the game any more without being reminded of the other aspects?

Geometry Of Imperfection

Contrary to the ranting beliefs of certain xenophobes, you don't have to be sick to enjoy watching soccer, but it can help. I'm recovering from a little head cold, which puts me in the mellow, contemplative sort of mood that allows me to thoroughly enjoy the Fulham-Liverpool match, even though there is no score at the half.

The question of geometry suffuses the entire match. John Arne Riise was a star with Liverpool, and now he is back in England with Fulham--symmetry. Give-and-go passes define invisible triangles, and attempted through balls are all about finding the right angle to create an intersection of the pass and the striker.

Knowing where someone is trying to play the ball when pulling it back from the end line is great fun, and even when a ball goes horribly awry, that still elicits a "Woah" of reaction as the ball goes sailing directly into the side advertising boards.

The pace of the Premier League is still so much faster than Major League Soccer. I also compare this to the College Cup, where the Stanford women just beat Duke. I got to see the game on ESPN3.com, and the soccer was just as pleasing to the eye, the same strategy, the same overlapping runs and working to unlock the defense, the same chess match as in Liverpool-Fulham, but at a slower pace.

Do you prefer watching professional or college sports? Do you prefer watching men or women? In soccer, other than goals, what are your favorite elements to see during the match?

The Goal Line

So, for many years, it has been rumored the 49ers would vacate Candlestick Park, and San Francisco in general, for the more suburban climes of Santa Clara. Sure, Santa Clara is fine for the Niners to use as a corporate headquarters and practice facility, but Santa Clara 49ers is almost as much of an abomination as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

In other words, I don't want the 49ers to move. The fact that I live in Santa Cruz and the Niners would actually be closer to me doesn't hold water, because I don't actually want to attend a game. I just want them to stay in San Francisco, since I grew up with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Roger Craig and their companions.

It looks more and more likely that the Niners will leave San Francisco. A ballot initiative, despite controversy, was passed in Santa Clara to allow the use of public funds for constructing a stadium, and the newspapers have reported that new private sources have been secured, completing the amount required. The thing that gives me hope it still won't happen is that a consultant for the project said, "It's like first and goal from the 9 yard line. We think we're going to score from here." I read that right before the Niners had first and goal from the five after a fumble, and had to settle for a field goal. Thus, my hope. The Niners have forgotten how to score touchdowns. Vernon Davis dropped a perfect pass in the end zone.

We are still up 9-0 so far against St. Louis, in a game where a tie or a win would clinch the division for us, but we haven't put the ball in the end zone. It doesn't bode well for us, how many times the offense has not finished in the end zone over the last few weeks.

But sports are full of fickle things, such as fortune. Look at Newcastle United: last week they benefited from a controversial penalty kick; yesterday, the referee failed to red card a Chelsea defender in the fourth minute, and Chelsea went on to win 3-0. Today is a possible clinching win for a first playoff birth for SF since 2002, but it has already seen Patrick Willis leave the game with a possible hamstring injury.

The Niners leaving San Francisco for Santa Clara would be another fickle thing. They would have to change their name, I think, because to say you represent San Francisco, but you actually play in Santa Clara, would be hypocritical, because you would be cashing in on the cachet of the name San Francisco 49ers.

Would this be truly fickle? Does it matter? I think it does, but I could be biased. Do you think that teams that relocate for the purposes of a fancier new stadium are cynically rejecting the emotional ties to a city for the sake of decisions that may be good for business?

I guess the point is the goal. Are the teams legitimately looking for a better facility to improve their chances for a championship? But if in doing so, they are turning their back on the community that has housed them for 50 years, are they selling their soul?

I say yes. What do you say?