Sunday, February 28, 2010

More than a game

Hockey. At times, it's just a game. Men's hockey is a somewhat odd inclusion in the Winter Olympics, given that its athletes are by and large (Tore Vikingstads excluded) internationally-renowned millionaires. That's in sharp contrast to the rest of the athletes, who generally aren't living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. At the same time, the sport is the marquee event of the Winter Olympics, and the most accessible event for many; most people have at least a passing familiarity with the game and the rules, unlike sports like curling or figure skating. It deserves to be here, and it deserves to be the final event.

The problem with that, though, is that the men's hockey final takes on so much significance that it can overshadow the rest of the Games. This is especially true in Canada, where our national identity is so bound up with hockey. As I wrote earlier, that's a somewhat superficial comparison, because we are much, much more than that. It still is an accurate one, though; despite our differences and our other interests, by and large, we still have such an incredible overriding concern for hockey.

That's why I was a bit concerned before this game about a potential excess of Canadian pride. Often, our passion for hockey enters unrealistic territory; we take a page from Don Cherry's playbook and start to think that Canadians are the only ones who can play and the natural superpower. That's not the case anymore. Before the tournament, I did predict that Canada would win, but I figured that any of four teams (Canada, Russia, the U.S. and Sweden) had a good shot at the top spot, and Slovakia and Finland provided surprisingly good as well.

Hockey may be a Canadian game in origin, but it's moved well beyond the bounds of Canada and there are great players from all over the world. Jingoistic types like Cherry still fail to realize that, and in doing so, they put such pressure on Canada to win every tournament that it becomes unrealistic. The Canadians may have the best and the deepest lineup, but there's a lot of parity out there, and upsets are to be expected (as happened against the U.S. in the round-robin).

Still, if Canada had come up short here, as they very nearly did, it would have spoiled the Olympics for many. All the success the country had acheived, even tying for the most golds ever won in a Winter Olympics, would have been overlooked because of a less-than-expected performance in men's hockey. The celebrations would have gone on, but they would have been muted rather than exuberant. There would have been a lengthy post-mortem, complete with endless dissections of the roster selection and the coaches' decisions. In short, it would have cast a pall [Barry Petchesky, Deadspin] over everything else that had been acheived. Instead, this victory just puts a cap on the celebration [Greg Wyshynski, Puck Daddy]. That it came in such dramatic fashion, in such an outstanding game [Andy Hutchins, The Sporting Blog], is just the icing on the cake, and made the hockey tournament the perfect conclusion to the games.

Are there still issues to be addressed with Olympic hockey? Of course there are. For one thing, I've argued all tournament that the smaller NHL-size ice gave physical teams like Canada, the U.S. and Finland (who earned the bronze last night) a big advantage as opposed to the more wide-open style of play on the Olympic-size ice used in Turin in 2006. Timo Seppa, a Finnish-born hockey writer at Puck Prospectus who also runs Ice Hockey Metrics, made the same point in a preview of the Olympic tournament over at the SportsJudge Blog. That doesn't mean these teams would necessarily have failed on bigger ice, but it does raise an intriguing question as to how they'll perform in Russia in 2014. After all, Canadians may have some scoring talent these days, but we all know that a farmboy from Canada has to hit somebody.

First off, though, the NHL has to let their players go to those Olympics. As Phil Catelinet wrote, the Olympics are a tremendous promotional venue for the NHL. It's basically like two weeks of all-star games where the players actually care, and throwing nationalism into the equation gets many non-hockey fans and casual fans into the sport. The Olympics are like a gateway drug in that respect; some will get excited about them and then return to ignoring hockey, but others will become hooked. Unlike drug addiction itself, getting sports fans hooked on hockey is a good thing, particularly for the growth of the game in the U.S. That's why Gary Bettman has to realize how important the Olympics are to his league before 2014. Sure, it's a two-week break and it comes with injury issues and the like, but in the end, those are minor concerns compared to the promotion the NHL receives in return.

Still, in the end, the future can be worried about at a later date. This was the perfect conclusion to an imperfect, but highly exciting Games. In the grand scheme of things, it may be just one little victory in a simple game, but right now, it feels like so much more.

Hockeypocalypse: Can Canada keep its pride under control?

"A modern-day warrior, mean, mean stride/Today's Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride" - Rush, "Tom Sawyer"

Today's gold-medal hockey game between Canada and the U.S. is pretty much a perfect way to end the Olympics. The U.S. leads the medal count, while Canada leads all countries in gold medals. Moreover, hockey's "Canada's sport", but one the Americans have taken up in ever-increasing numbers, and the talent gap between the two countries has increasingly diminished in recent years. It should be a fantastic display of hockey.

One of the questions is if Canada can keep its pride under control, though. For so long, there's been the attitude that all the Canadians need to do to win is just show up. That doesn't cut it anymore. Canada might still have the best roster on paper, but it's very close at the top, as their loss to the Americans in the round-robin and their close match against Slovakia in the semifinal proved. Anyone can win.

I think Canada will wind up taking today's game, but it's going to be close. The Americans are perhaps even more physical than the Canadian side, and they have a superb goaltender in Ryan Miller. They don't have quite the depth up front, but they do have some very skilled offensive players. To win, Canada will have to play with every ounce of effort they possess and not take anything for granted. I think they can do it, though, so if I had to pick a score, I'd say Canada 3, U.S. 2.

Win or lose, though, this game shouldn't provide a national crisis. If Canada wins, fantastic; that would be a great way to cap off the Games on home soil. If not, silver medals are still very good in a stacked international tournament like this. Many won't see it this way, but there's enough parity now that the "Any Given Sunday" cliche fully applies to today's hockey match.

I'm not generally a big nationalist or a fan of jingoism, but I would really like to see the Canadians win this, though. The U.S. already has had a tremendously successful Olympics, and a silver here would be better than many expected them to do. A loss won't overshadow their other accomplishments the way it likely would in Canada. For today, and today alone, I'll put on my hoserism toque and tell the Americans to take off!

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life: How curling's Kevin Martin explains the Canadian psyche

Everyone will be focusing on hockey for most of today, but I wanted to say a few words in praise of Canadian curling skip Kevin Martin before talking about the imminent Hockeypocalypse. For me, it was fantastic seeing Martin pick up his first Olympic gold medal in a hard-fought game against the Norwegians yesterday, the same country that beat him in the final in 2002.

To me, Martin is the quintessential embodiment of Canada. He doesn't look like an elite athlete; in fact he looks rather like a middle-aged insurance executive. He plays a sport not many people worldwide have heard of, and far fewer understand. Plenty of Winter Olympics sports have exposure issues, but most of them are simple enough to understand and appreciate on first glance when people do tune in, whether it's the high-speed thrills of bobsled or luge, the ridiculous hang time found in snowboard cross or the halfpipe, or the artistry of figure skating. To the uneducated, men's curling in particular often looks like a bunch of middle-aged men throwing rocks for some reason, which doesn't exactly appeal on first glance.

Martin in competition.
When you dig beneath the surface, though, there's much more to curling. It's an intensely strategic game, requiring the ability to think ahead as well as precision and power in throwing. There's much more to it than just throwing rocks.

Similarly, the popular perception of Canada is often that we're just a nation of polite guys who live in the cold and enjoy hockey to the exclusion of all else. Those stereotypes have some truth to them, just as curling is partially about sliding rocks down the ice. As with curling, there's much, much more to the country though, and one great benefit to these Olympics is they've shown off other elements of Canada to the world, including the lovely weather we often have on the west coast, our enjoyment of coming together to party and our talents in and enthusiasm for a wide range of sports.

Within his world, Martin stands out. He's been called "the Michael Jordan of curling" by American skip John Shuster, and it's a pretty apt description. Sure, there are plenty of differences in the sports they play, but both K-Mart and MJ share that killer instinct, and you don't want them up against you with the game on the line. The New York Times called Martin "a rock star", and the comparison is also pretty fair; he's a Canadian legend, and one who's beginning to attract interest on a wider stage. The world's starting to gain interest in curling, particularly the blogging world (thanks in large parts to the efforts of Dan Levy and Josh Zerkle, and they recognize that despite the tremendous talents of curlers from across the world, Martin is still at the top.

As the Olympics have gone on, Martin has gone from a Canadian curiosity to a figure with a significant profile on the world stage. The country has undergone a similar transformation, from "Canadians, aren't they cute" to leading the Olympics in gold medals and receiving a lot of world attention. Both Martin and Canada have caused people to look beneath the surface, and that's a good thing. We're more than just simply a nation of beer-drinking, hockey-loving hosers, even if we are that too. The world's starting to realize that, and Kevin Martin is a reflection of how far we've come. In fact, when you conduct a Google search for "Kevin Martin" today, the first five results are about the curler, with the sixth about the former FCC chairman and the seventh about the NBA player. Not bad at all for Canada and curling.

Friday, February 26, 2010

CIS: Walters leaves Guelph

The University of Guelph announced this morning that Kyle Walters will be stepping down as their head football coach [thanks to Jaime Stein for the tip]. The press release says Walters "will be parting ways with the Gryphons to focus on pursuing coaching ventures elsewhere at the professional level."

Mike Treadgold, the sports and health editor of The Ontarion (Guelph's student newspaper), tweeted this morning that a source informed him Walters is off to Winnipeg to become the special teams coordinator with the CFL's Blue Bombers, and also mentioned that rumour on his blog. It isn't completely confirmed yet, but that certainly sounds plausible given both the Bombers' coaching turnover and Walters' apparent desire to seek opportunities at the professional level.

Guelph may miss Walters. He was only the head coach for four years and only put up a 13-18-1 record overall, but the team certainly seemed to be on the rise recently. They've made the OUA playoffs for the last three seasons and went all the way to the final in 2007. Guelph slumped to a 3-5 record this year, but still clinched the last playoff spot and gave the Yates Cup finalist Western Mustangs a tough game in the first round. Walters might have had a difficult time replacing some of his star veterans, including the five players attending the CFL's evaluation camp and quarterback Justin Dunk. Still, at least from this perspective, Guelph seemed to be an up-and-coming program. It will be interesting to see if they can continue that momentum with a new head coach.

The larger issue here, as I covered with Paul James' departure from York and Neate discussed with Denis Piché leaving Ottawa, is if CIS programs are doing enough to retain elite coaches. There's certainly been some encouraging progress on that front recently, with more schools establishing full-time coaching positions, but many CIS coaches still have to split their coaching duties with another job (whether internal or external to their university). Even the full-time coaches generally aren't paid a lot, considering the massive amounts of work they have to do.

Football in particular is a huge challenge for coaches, given the amount of athletes involved and the massive amounts of work required. I don't know the details of Walters' contract with Guelph, but having a successful program is not just about the head coach, it's also about putting a committed group of coordinators and assistants together to support him. That takes money, but investing in the coaching positions is one of the smartest moves a university can make in my mind, as coaching continuity is key to many successful programs. It will be interesting to see who the Gryphons tab as their new coach. In any case, with both Walters and Piche gone, the OUA football landscape may be quite different next season.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Fear And Loathing In Vancouver: On CTV's Jingoism

(This is part of my ongoing series exploring the different sides of the Olympics; see this post for an explanation. I would have used "hoserism" instead of "jingoism", but I prefer to associate that with things I like.).

One of my central issues with the Olympics is the difference between what they are and what they claim to be. This shows up in almost every arena imaginable; the Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of sports at their purest, but the omnipresent corporate tie-ins detract from that a bit. They're supposed to be run by an international body that has the good of athletes as its top goal; in reality, they're run by an incredibly corrupt organization* that sees nothing wrong with blaming the victim to cover up its own flawed decisions. They're supposed to be an international gathering to promote peace and goodwill, but quite often, it seems that what they're really promoting is national chest-thumping.

*You can read Andrew Jennings' great book The Lords of The Rings for many of the juicy details on the IOC's scandals over the years. One of my favourite stories was how Salt Lake City organizers arranged hookers and Viagra for visiting IOC officials before the vote on where the 2002 Games would be held.

As I've written before, those issues don't make the Olympics all bad. There are plenty of extremely positive aspects to the Games, and they can be a lot of fun to watch, to be around and to write about. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the Olympics, and I certainly am. My argument is just that the bad needs to be taken into consideration as well as the good.

Unfortunately, CTV's television coverage has failed in that department. Their Olympic coverage has no sense of balance whatsoever, and appears more like IOC-approved jingoistic puff pieces than any attempt to accurately present the Games. It's not just that they ignore the issues around the Games, although that's part of it, but even when they're covering events, they frequently ignore what actually happened in favour of sappy homerism. To me, that's a huge shame and a disservice to Canadians.

Let's go through some examples. The first and most egregious is their coverage of the Olympic torch relay, an event which has very little to do with the "spirit of the Olympics" and much more to do with the Third Reich. True journalistic coverage would feature frank coverage of the relay's shameful beginnings, a balanced, thorough discussion on if it had moved past that to something that people could be proud to enjoy and fair coverage of the anti-torch protest movements. Of course, CTV isn't particularly interested in journalism when it comes to the Olympics, so they presented us with endless over-the-top sappy camera shots and stories instead, trying to pump us up to watch their endlessly promoted Olympic product and imploring us to "Believe".

That alone wouldn't set CTV apart from most of the national television broadcasters covering the Olympics, though, as just about every country's television stations get caught up in the hype to some degree. (The print and radio coverage certainly isn't perfect, either, but it does often tend to at least try to offer some balance). What really stood out about CTV's torch relay "coverage" was how 27 of the torchbearers were journalists working for the CTV-led Olympic consortium. As William Houston wrote back in October, "The question is: Did these people have a procedure involving the brain that went badly wrong? Or are they just naturally soft? They’re supposed to be journalists. They will be at the Olympics as reporters and commentators. They’re expected to be objective and independent. They are not supposed to be part of the Olympic cheerleading torch procession. Nevertheless, over the next few months, off they’ll go, boosting the International Olympic Committee and VANOC as they prance across the country, torch in hand."

With that move, CTV lost its objectivity and officially became a promoter of the Olympic mythology. You can see it every time those torchbearers are on air; the very people supposed to be bringing us objective information can't be taken seriously because of their involvement with the Games, and you can bet they never have anything bad to say about the rampant commercialism that goes hand in hand with the Olympics.

CTV sees nothing wrong with having a Coca-Cola truck in the torch relay procession. 

However, the network could have at least partially redeemed themselves with fair and balanced coverage of the actual Games. They've done that to a degree on their website, but their TV offerings have given us little to suggest that they aren't just presenting Olympic propaganda. One of the most poignant examples comes from the death of 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, which has cast such a shadow over these Games. Once it came out that Kumaritashvili had crashed, most media outlets went full-out to try and learn the details and debate the issue of track safety. CTV briefly mentioned that he was hurt, then returned to their feel-good shots of crowds cheering the Olympic torch instead of trying to piece together what went wrong, how serious it was and if the track design was an issue. A cynic might opine that they didn't want to dampen the country's Olympic spirits in advance of that night's Opening Ceremonies, which they just happened to be televising.

That's been far from the only example of CTV neglecting basic journalistic principles, though. At least other outlets in the consortium have discussed many of the issues around the Games in addition to providing positive coverage. It's possible that CTV has done so too, but whenever I can stand to tune in for a few minutes before being overcome by the syrupy propaganda, they're talking about another heartwarming Canadian athlete's story. An Ottawa BeaverTail would be less cloyingly sweet and patriotic.

It's also troubling that the CTV-led television stations are providing little to no coverage of other nations' athletes, or the actual sports going on. One key example came in the women's bobsleigh last night on Sportsnet, where the heavily-favoured German team suffered a crash that looked quite dangerous. There was very little discussion of why they crashed or if they were okay, and much more of a focus on how this paved the way for Canada to claim gold and silver. CTV then one-upped Sportsnet on the Fail-O-Meter by cutting away from the Slovakia-Sweden men's hockey game for a pointless, sappy interview with the bobsleigh gold medallists; while we were forced to watch their treacle, the Slovaks scored two quick goals, paving the way for their eventual victory. Of course, the only meaning that game had to CTV was that it determined who will face Canada Friday; the rest of the world's only here to compete against us, you know.

Are there good things about CTV's coverage? Sure. Life isn't black and white, and it would be pretty difficult to disagree with absolutely everything they do. Their website coverage has been very good, and has included several pieces critical of elements of the Olympics (most from Globe and Mail journalists rather than CTV types, but at least they're posting them). They've made it easy to find video highlights of any event and watch streaming video of events online, and they deserve applause for that. Perhaps most importantly, they realize that it's 2010 and tape-delayed sports just don't work anymore, unlike NBC. They are providing coverage of the Games, and some of their event coverage has been solid, hockey in particular. However, I, for one, would have appreciated it much more if they had delivered a journalistically balanced version of the Games as a real sporting event, rather than the treacly Olympic and Canadian propaganda they appear to have opted for.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life: The Atmosphere

(Because you can never see this song too much, here it is again. From Monty Python's great The Life Of Brian.)

There's been a lot of criticism of these Winter Olympics over the past few weeks, much of it deserved and some of it even by me. However, what many of the critics are overlooking is that there are real positives to the event that also deserve coverage. One of the most significant bright spots so far has been the atmosphere the Olympics have brought to Vancouver.

The Vancouver area is a great place to live, but for all its charms, it often feels awfully restrained. In one of the Hardy Boys' novels, it was described as "a sleepy fishing village", and ABC sportscaster Jim McKay commented during the Vancouver Whitecaps' 1979 NASL series against the New York Cosmos that "Vancouver must be like the deserted village right now" thanks to all the people watching on television. The village characterization isn't particularly fair given the size of the Vancouver area, but it does seem a bit sleepy at times; many of the downtown bars often close before midnight, there are constant litanies of noise complaints, especially in some of the more affluent neighbourhoods, and there's rarely a sense of widespread civic excitement around anything except the Canucks (the other sports teams all have their fans, but don't seem to make as much of an impact on the area as a whole).

The Olympics have changed that. For the last few weeks, Vancouver has been a nonstop party. There are always groups of people in the streets, the bars are packed and the official pavilions all have massive lines. Certainly, much of that's thanks to visitors and tourists, but there's a genuine sense of local excitement as well. The Olympics are on everyone's mind and tongue, and most of the reaction has been very positive. Sure, there are plenty of protestors and cynics (myself included in that latter group), but they're significantly outnumbered by those who are having a great time. This isn't necessarily uniformly good, as there have been issues with drunkenness and abuse, and it's also very difficult to get around town thanks to the Olympic crush, but on the whole, the atmosphere has been tremendous. Here’s a few photos from one of my trips downtown on Friday to give you an idea what it’s been like. These are from my Blackberry rather than an actual camera, so the quality isn't great, but they do portray part of the story:


The first stop was at the Atlantic Pavilion, which is normally the Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island (a very cool former industrial area that's now a nightspot). I've been there several times over the years for some excellent plays. This time, I was there to drink Atlantic beer, moonshine and screech. This was awesome.

The Swiss pavilion, also on Granville Island, had one of the neatest exterior designs I saw. It was still standing, thanks to Canada's shootout victory over the Swiss in men's hockey the previous night. I wasn't able to get inside thanks to the lines, but there were definitely lots of people having a good time there.

This is the statue of noted Scottish poet Robbie Burns in Stanley Park. You can't see it very well thanks to the distance, but he's gotten into the Olympic spirit; someone put a pair of the coveted red Olympic mittens on him, and (oddly enough in Vancouver), they hadn't been stolen by the time I took the photo!


How can you tell the Germans like to party? Most countries have a small, single pavilion downtown. The Germans have one of those as well, but the German state of Saxony has its own pavilion, and it's one of the best in the city. Located in Stanley Park in the lovely Vancouver Rowing Club building, this place is crammed full of TVs and offers authentic Saxony beer and delicious sausages, pork steaks, potato pancakes and sauerkraut. Highlight of the trip.


Here's the Vancouver waterfront from the deck of the Saxony Pavilion. That view just screams "Winter Olympics," doesn't it?

I figured it would be an appropriate display of hoserism to wear my lumberjack shirt. Here's all the context you need:


And here's the lineup for the Royal Canadian Mint pavilion. This was reported to be as long as six hours at times over the weekend. More impressively, everyone seemed to be taking it in stride. To me, that showed just how excited people are about these Olympics. That doesn't make them perfect or beyond criticism, but it does show that they do have a bright side.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

A tribute to HST

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the death of Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson has always been a hero of mine with his brilliant writing and his willingness to think outside the box and challenge the status quo, so I thought it would be only appropriate to honour him here.

In a lot of ways, Thompson pioneered the form that many of us bloggers use today, using unconventional approaches that never would have seen the light of day in the conventional media. He frequently abandoned the idea of neutrality, injecting himself and his views into his stories. That's not always a perfect tactic, but it can be used to great effect, especially if the writer keeps a sense of perspective; many sports bloggers bring their fandom to their writing and use it to elevate their work, rather than detract from it. Thompson also told a lot of the stories that weren't being written elsewhere, such as his great work on the Hells Angels and his analysis from Richard Nixon's campaigns. Sports blogs have done a similar service for a wide array of underpublicized topics, including sabermetrics, economic analysis and coverage of smaller leagues and sports. Moreover, Thompson always had a deep love for sports, and some of his best writing is on the subject.

That's not to say Thompson was right in everything he did, or that we should all follow his model completely; many have tried, to varying degrees of success, and it takes special talent to pull it off. In my mind, his career is more an interesting example of what can be done with journalism than a textbook for how to conduct it. Writing is a very individual thing with a multitude of different approaches, each of which have their own merits. We don't need to emulate Thompson down to the last detail, but it's certainly worth recognizing what he did for journalism and considering the unconventional way he approached stories. There will always be only one HST, but in our own small way, many of us would like to think that we are carrying on his legacy.

: For an introduction to Thompson's work, check out his excellent Page 2 sports columns from One particularly good one is this piece about watching the 2001 Stanley Cup final with his friend Warren Zevon, which led to them writing the song "You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared" together. I couldn't find a video of it, but here's another one that Thompson would approve of:

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Fear and Loathing in Vancouver: Ignoring the real problem

The Olympics have suffered countless calamities over the past week, including the mechanical failure at the conclusion of the Opening Ceremonies, a slew of weather issues, the cancellation of many of the tickets for events at Cypress, the collapse of a barrier at an Alexisonfire show and subsequent injuries to many concertgoers and the failure of the non-Zambonis at the Richmond Oval. For these events and a slew of others, the Games have taken a beating from many, particularly British journalists. Yet, as Bruce Arthur of the National Post points out in an excellent column today, the biggest issue around the Olympics is still the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and the cover-up that's followed it.

The IOC's initial response to Kumaritashvili's death was promising. The grief Jacques Rogge and John Furlong demonstrated appeared real and heartfelt, and their tribute to Kumaritashvili at the Opening Ceremonies was appropriate and well-delivered. However, shortly thereafter, the IOC changed their tune dramatically, blaming Kumartiashvili for his own death [Jere Longman, The New York Times] after a brief investigation. Arthur accurately called their news release on the matter "a truly heartless and despicable missive", which about sums it up. Georgia president Mikheil Saakashvili nailed it in his comments at a news conference [Donald McKenzie, The Canadian Press] shortly thereafter, saying "No sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death. No sports mistake is supposed to be fatal."

Blaming the tragedy on Kumaritashvili is missing a big part of the picture. Yes, Kumaritashivili made a mistake, and yes, that led to his death. Clearly, the course can be navigated without tragedy, or we would have seen other deaths. What the IOC is overlooking, though, is that these kind of sports by nature are a delicate balance between speed and safety, and the Whistler track falls on the wrong side of that line [Jeff Passan, Yahoo!]

As Jeff Blair of The Globe and Mail wrote a week before the crash, many concerns had been raised about the track's incredible combination of ridiculous speed and tremendous G-forces long before Kumaritashvili's death. The New York Times reported today that Venezuelan athlete Werner Hoeger had been trying to warn Canadian and international luge officials of the track's dangers since he suffered a concussion on a race there in November, and Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili of The Associated Press wrote that Kumaritashvili had called his father shortly before his death to relay his concerns about the track. Other athletes had commented on the track as well, with Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg being one of the most outspoken [ The Daily Telegraph]. "I think they are pushing it a little too much," Campbell-Pegg said before the fatal crash. "To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we're crash test dummies? This is our lives." Unfortunately, her comments and the comments American luger Tony Benshoof made to NBC [Blair] turned prophetic: "When I first got on this track, I thought that somebody was going to kill themselves."

The worst part about the luge tragedy is that the IOC has completely overlooked the inherent flaws in the track. Yes, they made some changes, but as Yahoo!]'s Trey Kerby commented, those changes should have been made beforehand. "I'm not a professor of luge safety, but doesn't it seem as if these extra measures should have been installed when the track was built?" he wrote. "Isn't it common sense to pad steel beams and to try to eliminate the possibility of a slider flying off the course? It's terrible that a life was lost to learn these lessons."

Even that would be more acceptable if the IOC admitted they got it wrong, and they were now fixing the problem. That wasn't how they approached it, though; the safety changes were depicted as unnecessary changes made only to reassure athletes. As Longman wrote, "Olympic officials insisted that the changes were not made for safety reasons, but rather to accommodate the emotional state of Kumaritashvili’s fellow athletes — a bogus notion." They've also announced that the track at the 2014 Olympics will be slower [AP], but won't admit that there's anything wrong with the track in Vancouver. They've tried to cover up the problem, and you can bet they're happy that everyone's moved on to more trivial complaints about the weather and the security. In the end, a man's life has been lost needlessly and the IOC has done their best to blame him for the tragedy. That's the real shadow that hangs over these Olympics.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

CIS: The end of a streak

Maybe the SFU Clan had the Olympics on their mind this afternoon, as they fell 63-61 [Mike Tucker, UVic Sports Information] on the road to the sixth-ranked University of Victoria Vikes in their final league game. It would be all too easy to see the Vikes' upset of the top-ranked Clan as some sort of game-changing moment for CIS women's basketball, but there's more to it than that. The Clan had won 49 straight games, or 54 if you count the playoffs, so it's certainly noteworthy that someone finally found a way to beat them. In truth, though, this probably just shows that Canada West is about more than just SFU.

As the most recent Top 10 rankings show, the conference is absolutely stacked in women's basketball. They have No.1 SFU, No.2 Regina, No.4 Saskatchewan, No.6 Victoria, No.8 Alberta and No.10 UBC, six out of the ten slots. Back in 2008, I wrote a piece for the Queen's Journal about the West's dominance in men's volleyball. What I wasn't able to include for space reasons is that they've been just as dominant in women's basketball, and for similar reasons (earlier introduction of athletic scholarships and earlier investment in facilities).

Canada West teams have won the last 18 national championships since Laurentian's back-to-back wins in 1990 and 1991. In fact, since the first national championship in 1972, there have only been nine championships won by non-Canada West teams, seven by Laurentian and two by Bishop's. It's not like it's been one absolutely dominant team, either; starting with the 2000 championship, Regina has one title, Victoria has two, UBC has three and SFU has four. That shows there's a long tradition of outstanding basketball in the conference, and it means it's not that surprising that someone finally knocked the Clan off.

The win also shows the progress the Vikes have been making, and suggests they'll be a tough team to face in postseason play. Kayla Dysktra had a huge game for UVic, scoring 18 points and adding 13 boards, while Debbie Yeboah dumped in 21 points, including 15 in the second half and the final buzzer-beater. The Vikes didn't get discouraged after being held to four points in the second quarter, which suggests they're a resilient bunch. They'll have their hands full against No. 4 Saskatchewan in the playoffs, but counting them out wouldn't be a wise move.

Don't go writing off SFU just yet, though. They lost to the No.6 team, on the road, in a game that was meaningless for their playoff position, on an improbable buzzer-beater. That's quite a collection of circumstances, and it's one that may not be repeatable. Moreover, their streak is made even more impressive by the quality opposition it's come against. The Clan have been incredibly dominant for the past two years; I watched them lay a smackdown on a very good UBC team just two weeks ago, and a single loss doesn't mean that incredible team has disappeared. Moreover, they'll be still looking to exit CIS competition with a bang. Sure, they're no longer invincible, but that doesn't make them any less of a juggernaut.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Fear and loathing in Vancouver, but there's still a bright side

One of the biggest problems with the Olympics in my mind is the way they divide people into camps. At the one end of the spectrum, there are those who get so wrapped up in nationalism that they cast a blind eye to the issues around the Games. They denounce anyone who dares to question elements of the Olympics as unpatriotic and label them as traitors and un-Canadian. At the other end are many people involved in the protest movements, who overlook all the positive aspects of the Games in favour of promoting their own narrow agendas. Both sides try to outshout the other and wind up becoming even more extreme in the process, leaving little room for rational thought and debate.

Where do I fall? Well, it should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this site's mission statement that, in the words of Pogo creator Walt Kelly, "I'm for the extreme middle." There are massive problems associated with the Games, the IOC, VANOC and the Canadian media's coverage of the Olympics, and those issues need to be addressed, not simply swept under the rug in the name of patriotism and nationalism.

At the same time, there are many great, inspiring things about the Olympics, and many people enjoy them, There's a lot of terrific sports action to follow, and a plethora of interesting angles to cover. Ignoring all that in favour of a narrow protest is fine for some, but it's not a path I'm interested in. What's more troubling are those who go beyond peaceful protests to violent activity and vandalism; that doesn't bring any attention to the issues around the Olympics, but rather encourages more outrageous nationalism as a counterreaction. Both sides have clear problems, and that's why the Olympics aren't a black-and-white issue.

That's why I'll be looking at things from both sides and trying to deliver a nuanced perspective throughout the Games here at Sporting Madness. Posts on the issues with the Olympics will be filed under the "Fear And Loathing In Vancouver" category (a homage to the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, and a tack I think he'd approve of). Posts on positive elements of the Games will be labeled with "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life", in homage to this brilliant bit of cinema:

There are also some parts of the Olympics that don't readily fall into either category, so those will just have regular titles. The Neutrals might approve of this, or they might not. In any case, hopefully I'll be able to present a reasonably balanced picture of what it's like to be around an Olympics. It should be an interesting ride.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Tragedy, and why it needs to be discussed

The horrific death of 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in an Olympic training run today was horrible to hear about. Sports are supposed to be an outlet full of recreation and entertainment, an escape from the gloomy world of the front pages, but far too often, the grim realities of life intrude. Whether it's fatal NASCAR crashes, athletes like Mickey Renaud dying from heart failure, young athletes killed in gang violence or old legends slipping away after health challenges, or the tragic impact of concussions on the lives of former athletes, illness and death all too frequently find their way into our escapist world.

CTV, one of the main Canadian networks broadcasting the Olympics, did their best to maintain that escapist illusion today. They gave the Kumaritashvili crash a passing mention before dashing back to their glowing propagandic coverage of the torch relay. Bruce Arthur of the National Post called their treatment of the situation "Orwellian" and "macabre", two statements I strongly agree with. There are even reports (from CFL Manager of Digital Media Jaime Stein) that CTV has been removing comments critical of their coverage of the crash from their website. Trying to sweep tragedies under the rug is never the right approach. To be fair, we probably shouldn't expect better from CTV, given that their entire buildup to the Olympics (including having their own staffers carry the Olympic torch) shows that they're more interested in propaganda than journalism. This is still disappointing from them, though.

This crash demands more coverage because, like most sports-related tragedies, it isn't an isolated incident. Jeff Blair of The Globe And Mail had an excellent piece last Saturday on the Olympic sliding track, which will be used for luge, skeleton and bobsleigh events. The track is so steep that it set records for the fastest speed in both luge and bobsleigh on the World Cup circuit. It also features turns of up to 5 Gs, and sleds routinely average 2.5 to 3 Gs on their way down the track.*

*For those who need a physics refresher, g is the gravitational constant of acceleration, or how fast you'd accelerate towards Earth in free-fall if there was no air resistance. It's approximately 9.81 metres/second squared. Thus, three Gs is three times the normal acceleration due to gravity, and about 30 metres/second squared. It's also about the amount of maximum acceleration encountered during a Space Shuttle launch. The effects of G-force, and how much humans can tolerate, depends on the duration of the acceleration and the direction it's coming from, but suffice it to say that 3-5 Gs is a hell of a lot.

It's not just that the track is fast; in fact, Kumaritashvili was clocked at 144.3 km/h, well below the track record of 153.9 km/h. The problems arise from combining an extremely fast course with high G-force twists and turns. According to the above Montreal Gazette story, the crash came on the final turn, Turn 16, known as "The Thunderbird", when "Kumaritashvili hit the track's inside wall, flew in the air up and over the outside wall and struck the girder". His crash is far from the only one, though; we've seen tons of athletes crashing on the course during World Cup events and during this practice week. The track is so intense that according to Blair's story, the IOC has already told organizers for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi to keep their sliding course more restrained.

The question is now what should come next. Chris Chase has a well-reasoned piece up at Fourth-Place Medal arguing that the track's too dangerous for luge, and the entire event should be cancelled. I'm not sure that that's the correct solution, but it absolutely has to be considered. If the luge event is to go on, there must first be a careful investigation and precautions taken to avoid a reoccurence of this tragedy.

In my mind, this tragedy and the others mentioned above speak to a broader dilemna in sports, though. There are fine lines to be walked, and many questions that must be asked. In luge and bobsleigh, there must be a balance between speed, thrills and safety, but where should it lie? In football and hockey, there has to be a distinction between physical play and head shots, and the need to reduce concussions has to be balanced with the need to deliver a hard-hitting product, but which side should we err on and where do we draw the line? Should all athletes be tested for heart conditions, and if so, at what age do we start? If an athlete is found to have a heart condition or some other defect, should we ban them from sports to preserve their safety, or should we let them play at their own risk?

In my mind, there are no black-and-white answers to any of these questions, and they all need to be looked at, researched, analyzed and debated. We need more detailed coverage of these tragedies, not less, even if it damages our goal of escapism. That's why CTV made the wrong move, going from a depressing story that needed to be covered to a potentially uplifting one that didn't need to be focused on. In my mind, we need to take a hard look at these situations despite their tragic nature, rather than sweeping them under the rug and moving on to the next feel-good moment.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Analyzing NFL coaching changes: does experience really help?

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about how Madden players might just turn out to be decent NFL coaches (and also the surprising lack of time today's coaches spend in game situations). Seeing as it's unlikely that NFL teams are going to be hiring gamers any time soon, I thought I'd take a look at how those teams make their decisions on who their head coaches should be, and how backgrounds influence NFL coaches' success. This hopefully will provide some insight into what kind of head coaching candidates teams should consider and how this year's new hires (Chan Gailey in Buffalo, Pete Carroll in Seattle and Mike Shanahan in Washington) might do.

Now, coaching success can't be considered in a vacuum; the personnel coaches inherit have a lot to do with their success. Thus, I looked at how coaches do both in immediate turnarounds (so, the next season) and over the long term (their complete records), and I also looked at their backgrounds. I selected the last five years (2005-2009) as a sample that would be reasonably large and readers would be familiar with, but this analysis could be easily done for any time period. Data is from Pro Football Reference, and is only looking at the regular season. Here's the complete spreadsheet; I'll break down the highlights of it further down.

First, let's consider the coaches with the top 10 first season turnaround percentages (calculated by taking their winning percentage from their first season in charge and subtracting the winning percentage of their predecessor in his final season). Here's that list.

One of the interesting things about that list is that only one of the new coaches (Wade Phillips) had previous head coaching experience. Three coaches had been defensive coordinators, three had been offensive coordinators and three were NFL assistants, but not coordinators. This would seem to fly in the face of the idea that it's best to hire someone who's been there and done that as an NFL head coach before. Let's see if that holds up over time by looking at the top 10 new coaches by overall winning percentage and how they compared to their predecessors.

As we can see, there are several holdovers from the previous sheet, but there are some new faces. What's more interesting to me is that the trend I discussed earlier has continued, though; only two of the new coaches have previous head coaching experience (Wade Phillips and Norv Turner), and those two are probably the most criticized members of this group for their lack of postseason success despite tremendously talented teams. Of the other eight coaches, two were NFL offensive coordinators and two were NFL defensive coordinators. The remaining four were NFL assistants. One other interesting note from this list is that Turner actually had a negative percentage change in his first season (-.188), as he took over Marty Schottenheimer's 14-2 Chargers team and led them to a measly 11-5 record. I'd suggest that Turner actually is quite a talented coach, despite public perception, but the fact remains that he had a tremendous amount of starting talent to work with.

Another element to examine is the top 10 coaches from an overall change perspective (how their overall record compared to their predecessor's overall record). Here's that list.

This list features some of the same names we've seen on the previous lists, and some new ones. One thing that interests me about it is that it includes two guys typically panned as horrible NFL coaches; Lane Kiffin and Romeo Crennel. Yes, neither was particularly good, as they had overall winning percentages of .250 and .375 respectively, but they were significant improvements over their predecessors (Art Shell and Terry Robiskie). However, depending on how you consider coaches, Crennel could be omitted; Robiskie was only an interim coach who guided the 2004 Browns for the five games of the season, so you can argue that Crennel's real predecessor is Butch Davis, who actually had a superior career winning percentage in Cleveland to Crennel (he was 24-34 with the Browns from 2001 to 2004 for a .414 percentage). Davis went 5-11 and 3-7 (.313 and .300) in his last two seasons, though, so it's clear that whatever you think of Crennel as an overall coach, he didn't have a lot of talent to work with at the start.

More interesting still, though, is that the trend noted above is most pronounced here. Only one of these coaches, Phillips, has previous head coaching experience at the NFL level. Four were NFL defensive coordinators, two were NFL offensive coordinators, Kiffin was an offensive coordinator in college (with previous experience as an NFL assistant), and the other three were NFL assistants. Thus, it looks like hiring guys who have previously been head coaches might not be the best move. Let's investigate this further by looking at the worst coaches in my spreadsheet, initially by first season change.

The reverse trend appears to be taking place here. Four of these new coaches were previous NFL head coaches, and another one (Bobby Petrino) was previously a head coach in college. Of the remaining coaches, two were NFL assistants, one was a defensive coordinator and two were offensive coordinators. Thus, hiring up-and-coming guys isn't a sure guarantee of success either, but hiring former head coaches doesn't seem to work too well. It's also interesting that Raheem Morris comes in at the top of the list; he took over Jon Gruden's Tampa Bay team that went 9-7 in 2008 and led it to a 3-13 record this year. Despite that, he seems to have received much less criticism than many other coaches this year, including Tom Cable, Jim Zorn, Dick Jauron and Eric Mangini, all of whom were more successful in their first season than Morris. That doesn't mean Morris is necessarily a worse coach then those candidates, but it is curious that he hasn't received a lot of criticism for taking a team that almost made the playoffs and turning them into one of the NFL's worst franchises.

Now, let's look at the worst coaches by overall change. Here's the top 10:

Here we see many of the same offenders from the last list and many of those traditionally considered some of the worst NFL coaches, including Cam Cameron, Art Shell and Dick Jauron. The head coaching trend also continues here, as five of these coaches were previously NFL head coaches and one (Petrino) was previously a college head coach. Two of the others were NFL offensive coordinators and two were NFL assistants.

What's also interesting is that five of these hires were internal. Most of the NFL's hires have been external (from other franchises); only nine of the 38 coaches hired over that period were internal, so it's quite significant that five of those nine showed up on this list of the worst coaches out there. Here's a look at all nine coaches hired internally, sorted by winning percentage:

As you can see from that list, only two of the internal hires had an overall record over .500 with their team. Those hires are Jim Caldwell and Mike Singletary. Of course, Caldwell took over from the retiring Tony Dungy, who had a career winning percentage of .777 with the Colts and was 12-4 in his final season; not exactly the toughest situation to be thrust into. He did find a lot of success this year, taking the Colts all the way to the Super Bowl, but he had a terrific staff already in place and a quarterback who's perhaps more involved in offensive playcalls than any other player in the league. He also managed to find a way to give history the finger, angering fans and members of his team in the process, and there's a good argument to be made that Caldwell was outcoached in the Super Bowl and may have cost his team the game. Thus, Singletary's really the only impressive internal hire, as he took over a horrible team and made them into a potential playoff contender.

So, what overall lessons can we take from this study? First off, it looks like teams are generally better off going with external hires. Secondly, it looks like those candidates who haven't previously been head coaches are more likely to be successful. The first point bodes well for Shanahan, Carroll and Gailey, as none of them came from the organization they're now coaching. The second doesn't, though, as all three were previously head coaches. Shanahan was quite successful as an NFL head coach, though, while Gailey was only 18-14 and Carroll was 33-31 (but successful as a college head coach at USC). We'll see how they do, but history isn't in their favour.

Comments? Questions? Other trends you've noticed from my data? Let me know in the comments, or by e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Pigskin Predictions: The Super Bowl

It should be an interesting Super Bowl today; a clash between two high-powered offences, as well as two very different game philosophies. The Saints have a balanced attack and an incredibly aggressive defence, while the Colts' defence excels at limiting big plays and their offence is dominant in the passing game, but struggles to run the ball. You can find my full preview piece below, as well as other ones I wrote for Rob Carnell at Salt Water Music and Ryan Gallivan at The Gally Blog. Now, it's time for the prediction.

Everyone has the Colts as big favourites, but I think this is overlooking a few things. For one, as Neil Paine points out, SRS (simple rating system, explained here), which looks at teams' average margins of victory and their opponents' average ratings, is overwhelmingly in favour of the Saints. Yes, the Saints struggled against the Vikings in the NFC Championship game, but the Colts had issues with the New York Jets, a much less well-rounded team. For another thing, the Colts haven't shown much of an ability to run the ball or stop the run consistently. They did both to some degree against the Jets, but part of that was thanks to the Jets' one-dimensional approach on both offence and defence; New York sold out to stop the pass and ran the ball as frequently as possible, allowing the Colts to burn them both ways by running at unexpected times and stacking the box against the Jets' rushing attack. New Orleans has an incredibly balanced team with a variety of options that can hurt you in the run game and the pass game, so it will be more difficult to stop them.

I also love the Saints' uber-aggressive defensive strategy of trying to force turnovers at all costs. Turnovers can often swing a game, and the Saints create a ton of them. Meanwhile, the Colts' defence is solid, but I can't stand its strategy of only trying to limit big plays. It's like the old quote, "A prevent defence only prevents victory."

In general, I think the Colts are a bit overrated. Yes, they've had great regular-season performances throughout this decade, but their one Super Bowl victory came against Rex Grossman, and I'm pretty sure I'm a more capable quarterback than Grossman. Manning and company have built a solid franchise, but not a legendary one, and playoff wins over deeply flawed teams like the Ravens and Jets haven't changed my opinion of them yet. They're good, but I don't think they're as good as their press clippings.

My final reason for picking the Saints has nothing to do with anything on the field, but rather how the Colts laid down in Week 15 rather than going for a perfect season. Sure, they got the pressure off them, but they sneered at history, and I'm hoping that will come back to bite them. As Herm Edwards once said, "YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME!" The Colts didn't do that, and that's why I'm hoping the Saints will go marching in today.

Prediction: Saints 35, Colts 31

Previewing the Super Bowl, with Ryan Gallivan and Alex Holt

This year’s Super Bowl is more than just a battle between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts; it’s also a clash of styles between the Colts’ pass-heavy offence and the Saints’ balanced attack. New Orleans was sixth in the league in rushing this year, averaging 131.6 yards per regular-season game, and fourth in passing, averaging 272.2 yards per game. The Colts were second in the NFL in passing yards per game, averaging 282.2 yards per game, but dead last in rushing, putting up only 80.9 yards on the ground.

The Colts’ rushing game hasn’t improved by the numbers in the playoffs, as they’re still only averaging 2.9 yards per attempt and 71.5 yards per game. However, those stats are somewhat deceiving. The Colts got nowhere on the ground against the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round, putting up only 44 yards on 23 carries, but that game was out of hand early and the Colts were often running just to control the clock. Against the notably effective rushing defence of the New York Jets in the conference championship game, a contest that was much closer throughout, the Colts piled up 103 yards on 23 rushing attempts, with featured back Joseph Addai picking up 80 yards on 16 carries. Their rushing defence, which allowed 126.5 yards per game during the regular season (24th in the league), also performed much better against the Jets’ top-ranked ground attack, holding New York to 85 yards on 27 carries. Ryan Gallivan, a Colts’ fan who edits The Gally Blog, said Indianapolis’ recent transformation has overtones of déjà vu.

“This year is eerily reminiscent of 2006-2007 when the Colts beat
the Bears in the Super Bowl,” Gallivan said. “The Colts were merely adequate at
defense that year and slightly above average at running the ball. Come playoff time though, the team transmogrified into a run stopping team that could pound the ball.”

Gallivan thinks Indianapolis is likely to continue this success Sunday. He argues the passing game is performing so well that opposing teams become focused on shutting it down, leaving holes that can be exploited by the run game.

“The Colts’ run game may not win the Super Bowl for them as it did in 2007, but it is going to
continue its playoff trend and not the regular-season trend,” Gallivan said. “The biggest reason is that everyone in the football world is scared of Peyton Manning right now.”

However, that doesn’t mean the Colts have a great rushing offence. Gallivan said both of their primary running backs, Addai and Donald Brown, have significant flaws. He thinks Addai is a better option, though.

“I'm not ready to accept either of these guys right now,” he said. “Though Brown is more explosive, Addai is more sure-handed and as I don't expect the game to be won on the ground, I want Addai getting the touches. Though he lay mostly dormant this year, he showed signs of life against the Patriots and two weeks ago against the Jets. He's not a home-run guy, but if he can get going, he's very good after the first tackle. If we're needing to play ball control, we're going to be looking for him. Plus, Addai is very adept in the pass game both as a blocker and receiver.”

Gallivan figures the Colts will need to run the ball frequently Sunday despite the flaws in their ground game.

“The Colts are always better as a balanced team,” he said. “Sure, this year
they passed a gaudy 62.15 per cent of the time, but it often seemed that it was a necessity. The Saints passed nearly eight per cent less than the Colts did, for example, but the Colts often had to pass as they were trying to come from behind,which they did a record-setting seven times this season. The Colts’ offence requires the play-action pass and the stretch run for it to work most effectively, so if the run/pass ratio is close to 50 per cent, that means their offence is working how they want it to work.”

One of the key subplots leading up to the Super Bowl has been the health of Indianapolis’ star defensive end Dwight Freeney, who’s recovering from a severely torn ligament in his right ankle. Freeney hasn’t practiced all week, but Gallivan thinks he’ll be featured come game time.

“Dwight Freeney is going to play,” he said. “Terrell Owens played in the 2005 Super Bowl coming off a fractured fibula and severely sprained ankle. He healed those injuries in part in much the samemanner as Freeney, with extensive time in a hyperbaric chamber and using the microcurrent system. It's the Super Bowl, so there's no chance he won't get some playing time.”

Even if Freeney isn’t fully healed, Gallivan thinks it will benefit the Colts to have him in the lineup.

“A Dwight Freeney at, say, 60 per cent is still more effective than about 50 per cent of the DEs in the league,” he said. “Freeney and Robert Mathis are the best pass rushing tandem in the NFL. If Freeney is in at close to full strength, it means that the Saints will have to keep a TE or RB in to help Jermon Bushrod block, though that doesn't mean that Mathis will be blockable. With the two of them in with emotions this high, it could potentially negate two passing options on every play that they're in. With Freeney out, Mathis moves over to RDE and the versatile but less-proven Raheem Brock steps in at LDE. Brock is no slouch at DE, but he's not Freeney, so the whole pass rush dynamic changes with Freeney out.”

The Saints have an explosive offence of their own, but Gallivan thinks they do have weaknesses.

“I'm going to take a lot of flack for this, but the Saints aren't exactly a power team,”
he said. “They've been successful because they're generally faster than the opposing defences, which causes various matchup problems. They're not faster than the Colts’ defence, which is
built to be small, rangy and fast. Though they blitz more frequently this year under [defensive coordinator Larry] Coyer, they are a trademark Monte Kiffin Tampa-2 defence. Because they struggled mightily against the run earlier in the year, and the two games where they didn't try, they appeared more
vulnerable than they were.

Gallivan’s expecting a shootout Sunday, with both teams going for it early and often.

“I think this has the potential to be an amazing game,” he said. “Don't expect the punters to come out unless it’s something like fourth and 14 at your own 26-yard line. Sean Payton is a risk-taker and knows that this
year, Peyton Manning is a freak and must be put down. He's aware you can't be happy collecting field goals against the Colts and will go for it frequently and often. Don't be surprised when New Orleans
goes for it on fourth and 6 when they have a 48-yard field goal available. The Colts will not be as aggressive, but whoever is actually calling the shots in Indy will be more aggressive than Dungy
was these last few years.”

Gallivan said he expects the Colts’ strengths are enough to give them a close victory.
“ I think it will be a thrilling game, with the Colts pulling ahead in the last few minutes
and holding on to win 35-31,” he said.

The Saints have strengths of their own, though. Alex Holt, who’s written extensively on the NFL for The Rookies and covers Buffalo sports at And The Shot, thinks New Orleans’ balanced approach will give them an advantage Sunday.

“I certainly think having more than one offensive dimension gives the Saints somewhat of an edge,” he said. “I really is hard to win when you're only really good at one offensive aspect of the game. The Saints definitely have a much better chance of winning the game if their defence can force the Colts to rely on their running game. The catch here is that Peyton Manning's such a talented QB that shutting down the Colts' passing game is easier said than done.”

Holt said one of the Colts’ weaknesses comes from Freeney’s injury. If he sits out, they’ll miss his experience and talent, but Holt figures if he plays while hurt, the Saints may be able to take advantage of his lessened explosiveness.

“As long as the Colts actually plan on rushing Dwight Freeney back at less than 100 per cent, that's definitely going to be a matchup the Saints can take advantage of,” he said.

Holt isn’t underrating the Indianapolis defence, as he thinks their talent might pose a few issues for the Saints. It depends on New Orleans’ approach, though.

“ I think they need to keep an eye on Kelvin Hayden at CB and Antoine Bethea at FS,” Holt said. “Drew Brees is arguably the best QB in the NFL in terms of being able to successfully throw deep on a consistent basis so if the Colts' secondary has a good night, that takes away a major aspect of Brees' game and forces them to rely more on the running game, which the Colts certainly wouldn't have as hard a time stopping.”

Both teams showcase very different approaches on defence. The Colts have focused on limiting big plays by the opposing offence all year and finished 18th in the league with 339.2 total yards allowed per game, while the Saints allowed more yards (357.8) but focused on jumping routes to make interceptions and stripping the ball from opposing players instead of just bringing them down. They finished third in the league with 26 interceptions, while the Colts were 15--th with 16. Holt said that aggressive approach has worked well for the Saints in the past, but they may need to tone it down Sunday.

“Most of the time, I think these gambles are worthwhile,” he said. “It worked great with Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre in the NFC Championship. In fact, if the Jets had somehow beaten the Colts two weeks ago, I think the Saints could have had a field day trying to force fumbles and pick-sixes out of Mark Sanchez (after all, even the Bills were able to do that once this season). Unfortunately for the Saints, they're up against Peyton Manning and he's far smarter than Sanchez or Favre so they'll definitely get burned if they try the same approach they used in the championship game. The key to beating the Colts on Sunday is to force them to rely on the running game.”

Holt said he’s hoping the Saints will pull off the upset, but he expects the Colts to prevail in a high-scoring nailbiter.

“I'm rooting for the Saints to win but I know how likely a Colts win is,” he said. “I am going to go so far as to say that this game will be won with a single digit lead and probably in the 30s. It's possible that it will be in the 20s if both defences play out of their minds, or in the 40's if this becomes Cardinals-Packers redux, but 38-31 just sounds right to me. Either way, this should be the anti-Bucs-Raiders of Super Bowls.”

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The Experiment: If you build it, will they win?

As long-time readers will know, I'm a great admirer of the "Moneyball" strategy of acquiring undervalued players. At the time of Moneyball, most of these players (at least the ones successfully targeted by Billy Beane) fit into the high on-base percentage, low batting average category. There still are deals to be had on some of those players, but most major-league teams (except maybe the Kansas City Royals) have realized the importance of OBP, making it harder to exploit that particular market inefficiency. However, there are still inefficiencies out there, and some of them can be spotted with sabermetric research. This suggested an interesting train of thought to me. In the last experimental post, I took a look at how Madden users might fare against NFL coaches in play-calling and clock management. Now, I want to see if a baseball fan with a passing knowledge of sabermetrics like myself could put together a better lineup than experienced MLB general managers.

Imagine this hypothetical; it's the winter meetings of 2008, and Major League Baseball has allowed my team to compete as a National League expansion franchise, known as the Surrey Scorpions. They've allowed this only because I waved a massive stack of cash under Bud Selig's nose and he couldn't resist. We can now go ahead and put a roster together, subject to some conditions we'll discuss later. Constructing a roster is a time-consuming process, though, so we'll work on putting together our eight starting position players for now and look at pitching and depth down the road.

Now, it would be simple to just pick the players with the highest batting averages or home run totals, but looking at those stats alone overlooks other crucial elements of the game, such as walks and defence. At the end of the day, a major league team's goal is to win games, not batting titles or home run derbies, so we have to look a little deeper. Perhaps the best measure of a player's overall contributions to his team comes from FanGraphs' Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat. For positional players, it looks at how many wins their batting and fielding skills produce relative to a hypothetical "replacement player" (i.e., an easily attainable minor league callup), with position factored in (there's an excellent explanation of how this works by Jeff Aberle at Behind The Boxscore). This is useful for this kind of analysis because it takes almost everything into consideration and melts it all down to a simple stat expressed in terms of wins.

One popular misconception about sabermetrics is that they're firmly against the traditional ways of analyzing the game. Of course, as with most sabermetric stats, the names at the top are still mostly recognizable superstars. Here's a list of the top players at each (non-pitching, non-DH) position by WAR in 2009.*

*Players with higher WARs than those below them, but lower WARs than the top players at their position are included for the sake of completeness and marked with a *. Additionally, I treated the corner outfield positions as equivalent, as many players move between right field and left field over their careers, and who plays in which slot is usually determined by team need. I've ignored designated hitters to simplify this, so all lineups are eight-man. Salaries are taken from the "base salary" category at MLB Secrets.

And here's a list with just the top player at each position:

As you can see from the players included on that list, it would be completely unfeasible to assemble this team. Some of these guys are extremely expensive veterans, such as Matt Holliday, Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter. Others are emerging young stars who aren't making a ton yet, but certainly wouldn't be traded by their teams for anything less than a king's ransom; this category includes Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria.

That leaves us with two constraints to consider; cost and tradeability. First, let's take a look at cost. Obviously, finances play a huge role in building a successful MLB franchise. A team that generates a lot of revenue, such as the Red Sox or Yankees, has a much easier time going out and getting the top players via trades and free agency without worrying about their salaries. Money doesn't automatically equal success, though. As teams like the Mets and Mariners have shown over the past years, it's still quite possible to spend a lot of money without creating a good team. Tom Verducci did a great analysis of teams' payrolls, regular-season wins and postseason acheivements at Sports Illustrated earlier this month; I want to take that a step further by looking at how much various MLB teams spent on their everyday players and how many more wins that netted them than just fielding a full team of replacement players for an entire season. Aberle estimates a complete team of replacement players would win 49 games and cost $11.2 million, so you can figure that each WAR the starting position players can add would add a win for that team.

Thus, the ideal lineup shown above has a combined WAR of 56.9, which would mean that they would be expected to win 106 games with replacement-level pitching. With good or even average pitching, they'd probably set a wins record. However, even with a few cheap young stars on there, they still have a combined salary of $69.7 million. That's not completely ridiculous on its own, as the Yankees (who we'll discuss later), spent $114.1 million on their starting eight, but the tradability concerns with the young, cheap players mean that this lineup still couldn't be put together in real life, especially with an expansion team like the Scorpions. If it was, though, it would have an efficiency rating (WAR/cost) of 0.81, which is pretty good; we'll get to some existing franchises efficiency ratings below. At the other end of the spectrum, the starting eight for a team composed entirely of replacement players would cost $4.4 million, and by definition, have a combined WAR of zero and an efficiency rating of zero.

Now, let's discuss the tradability concerns. One of the problems with many attempts at this sort of hypothetical analysis is they involve taking over an existing team and making a few changes that the author would like to see. These simulations can be useful, but they're limited, because part of the team's success will naturally come from the pieces that are always in place. Also, many of these situations involve proposed trades, and the problem with these is that you can't guarantee that any trade will be accepted by the opposing general manager (no matter how reasonable it may seem). Controlling for these effects from pieces already in place is the main reason why our hypothetical involves starting a completely new team with Major League players. Sound familiar? That's right; this will be the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant Team 2.0!


However, unlike Mr. Burns, we can't just go and grab all the best players out there (which is what the lineup above would be). There is a limit to Selig's generosity; he's refused to allow the Scorpions to partake in the draft for this year or sign anyone under contract to another franchise. Thus, we're limited to free agents. Here's a list of all the 2008-2009 free agents that we'll be working from. It's not particularly long or particularly good, but it's the best we've got.

Using this list, I've produced two potential batting lineups for the Scorpions. Here's the first one, which assumes that the team can afford a $100-110 million payroll for for the entire team (counting pitchers). Thus, this is the best available lineup in terms of WAR that can be constructed with solely free agents.

This lineup produces 24.5 wins above replacement, which is quite good, as we'll see later when we look at actual major league lineups. However, as you can see from the salary of $57.3 million and the Efficiency Rating of 42.8 per cent, it's not particularly good value for money. Most of that's thanks to the large salaries of Mark Teixeira ($20.6 million) and Kosuke Fukudome ($11.5 million). If we replace them with cheaper but less productive guys, we have a more efficient roster (and a more realistic one) that still produces very well. Here's what this looks like:

This lineup produces 18.9 wins above replacement for a cost of $26.2 million, giving it a much better efficiency rating of 72.1 per cent. Its cost is also quite reasonable, especially when you consider that it's generally more expensive to assemble teams out of free agents than in-house talent. As mentioned earlier, a complete team of replacement players would be estimated to produce 49 wins and cost $11.2 million. Thus, if we bring in these guys and keep our replacement pitchers and replacement bench players, we have a payroll of an incredibly cheap less than $37.4 million and a team that would be expected to win a respectable 68 games. For reference, that's similar to the Marlins' payroll last year and well below the 2009 payroll of every other team.

How do real batting lineups compare? I took a look at the WAR ratings and salaries of the (non-DH) positional starting lineups on 12 MLB teams to compare, including very successful teams like the Yankees, notedly efficient teams like the A's, big spenders like the Mets and noted sabermetrics disdainers like the Royals. WAR numbers are from Fangraphs, salaries are from MLB Secrets or Baseball Reference and the starting player at each position is from Baseball Reference's data, based on who started the most games for them last season. Here are the results.

And here are those ratings in a table:

Of the 12 teams analyzed, only three lineups (Yankees, Tigers and Dodgers) had higher total WARs than the efficient free agent lineup I proposed above, and all of those teams had a much lower efficiency rating than my lineup. Only the Yankees' lineup produced more total WAR than the best free agent lineup out there. The Marlins, Indians and Rangers were all more efficient than my efficient lineup, but produced fewer total WAR. When you consider the limited number of free agents available, the artificial restriction of not allowing trades or draft picks and the (generally) higher cost of signing, To me, that shows there are still undervalued players out there, which means that the central theme of Moneyball is still very much alive. However, the trick is still figuring out which players are going to do well each season. That's a subject for a future post.

(As always, feedback is welcomed, either in the comments below, via Twitter or Facebook, or by e-mail.)