Football Perspectives
The only sport I still follow enough to be considered a real fan is football. The pace is right, it is complicated enough to hold my interest and there are a lot of different skills occurring during every play. But the truth, sadly, is that football game outcomes are largely unpredictable. It is worse than predicting horse races and anyone who ever tried their luck there knows what I mean. For three years a good friend and I have been predicting the winners of professional football games along with 3 media experts, and a composite prediction by Yahoo Users. The winner over the season this year predicted the winner of a game 63% of the time. The last place finisher predicted the winner 59% of the time. That means the most important factor in predicting a winner is the unpredictability. Also, the predictable components were adhered to, for the most part, by all those in the contest. Other years produced similar results. And yet, there are pregame shows, postgame shows, and numerous call in talk shows in which the participants act vigorously like they understand exactly who is going to win, and then later, exactly why every team lost and who is to blame. Nevertheless, it is fun and we humor ourselves into thinking we all know which are the better teams and why.
I rooted for 5 teams this year and only one made the playoffs. Three of them missed the playoffs on the last day of the season. How uplifting! Except for the home town team I tend to root for a team based on individuals. Individual performances have less variability than team performances, but not by a whole lot since the unpredictable factors affect them too. So what then, are the major factors which determine which football team will win any particular game? In my mind they are as follows, ranked in rough order:
Talent
Injuries
Coaching
Weather
Penalties
Turnovers
Circumstances
Injuries, for the most part, are uncontrollable and increasingly more frequent because the players are stronger, faster, and bigger than ever before. It is really amazing more players aren't more seriously injured. I think one hit and I might be laid up for the season. The team that starts the season will not be the team that finishes the season.
Talent is not as easy to measure as it seems. Stats are of limited use. If you are a receiver, for example, your stats depend on who the quarterback is, if the team has a good running back, the quality of the game plan, the quality of the division you play in, whether you are double teamed or not, and the quality of the other receivers on the team. None of this shows up in the stats. And the same sort of thing can be done with most of the other positions. I guess talent starts with a good quarterback, a good running back, and a good receiver. If a team is notably weak in any of these areas the offense starts off at a disadvantage. Defense has to be more solid across the board or the opposing team will exploit any weaknesses. It is hard to be good without a good quarterback and good quarterbacks are not plentiful.
Coaching---Maybe those players with sufficient smarts could evaluate a Coach but I think others are mostly talking out of their ass. And to make matters even more confusing, there are like 17 different assistant coaches, mostly position coaches. People like to envision a football team which is out there practicing with everybody interacting with each other, all one big close knit 'family'. Of course that is nonsense. Mostly the position coaches are working with their players and any interaction at practice is mostly with others being coached by the same position coach. Unless there is off the field friendships there is little personal interaction. With 50-60 players it is more like an IBM complex where you deal mostly with those in your little room of cubicles. IBM is not family and neither is a professional football team. Like with teaching in schools, football coaches of varied personalities and methods succeed and fail. The best football coaches, like the best teachers, are not carbon copies of each other at all. There are varied ways to be a good teacher or a good football coach and if anyone makes a list of the best teachers they ever had, this point will become clear.
The weather can affect games considerably, and ironically, the weather factor becomes more important in the playoffs when outdoor games can become entertainment, but hardly any way to determine who is the better team. If it is windy and difficult to pass, the best running team has the advantage. If the ground is slippery the best passing team has the advantage (the receivers know where they are going, the defenders do not). You can then add snow, and rain, fog, freezing temperatures, boiling temperatures, etc. and this factor can become a major factor.
Penalties are inevitable, though good coaching may be able to keep the penalties to a minimum. But still, when the penalties occur are mostly unpredictable. Depending on the situation on the field, when the penalty occurs can be more or less disastrous. And a certain number of penalties are not called because the refs don' t see it. That too, is a factor beyond control. Then of course there are the penalties called which are unfair. Good luck with controlling that. Who moved first, was there really pass interference, was there really a hold, etc.
Turnovers can sometimes be harmless and sometimes disastrous. Good coaching may be able to limit the number of turnovers, but again, it is difficult to control when they occur. And when the ball is loose, who will recover this odd shaped ball is pretty much a wash. You might be lucky, you might not be.
Circumstances refers to the particular situation in which any of the above uncontrollable things happen, like injury, penalties, turnovers, weather, missed tackles, missed catches, missed blocking, poor kicking, bad throws, etc. All these things will happen and exactly when they happen has a large impact on the game.
Anyone who follows football knows all of the above and yet all of us insist we know who will win this or that game. Granted, if the talent is bad enough, that factor will pretty much doom the team. You can't mix bad talent with the other factors and win too often. But many teams have relatively good talent and who wins any PARTICULAR game between talented teams is hardly predictable at all. The other factors---uncontrollable---will decide the game for the most part. And that is just the way it is. One game playoffs, by any realistic measure, hardly prove who is the better team. Not only will each team be affected by which players are healthy enough to even play, but they are close enough in talent that these other factors will dominate the outcome. Everyone has seen good teams get blown out in particular games. Everyone has seen poor teams perform splendidly in particular games. The truth probably is that any team in the playoffs could do well if the uncontrollable variable factors listed above go their way.
The silliest nonsense occurs after a game when the blame game begins. Of course it is possible to identify culprits, like a quarterback who threw the ball poorly, a receiver who drops an unusual number of passes, failed coverages, etc. That is fair enough. But most of the stuff is just silly. One team tried harder than another, one team wanted it more than the other. Now how the hell is that measurable? Because a player screams a lot during the game does that mean he cares more? Because a player hops up and down a lot, does that mean he cares more? Maybe the guy ought to save his energy for his play on the field. As soon as one team starts to get blown out for any of the reasons listed above, they are labeled as not trying as hard as the other team. If it has any truth, it is unmeasurable.
Then comes the next absurdity. The other team showed more team effort, more teamwork, and the losing team is not really a team, just individuals and players on the team should work at being better teammates. This is just poppycock nonsense which sounds good. The guy fumbled the ball because he is not a good teammate? Or has bad teammates? The guy who threw poorly needs to work on being a better teammate? The guy who misses a tackle did so because he doesn't really like some other guy on the team? And so it goes, all the missed or poorly executed plays are because of bad chemistry between the players. These are not kids. Every one of the players knows that at the end of the season they will be evaluated on their individual performances. Did you catch the ball, did you tackle well, did you run the ball well, did you block well, and so it goes. No player is ever told, "Sport, you missed too many tackles, created too many penalties, had too many missed play assignments, but you always got to practice on time, the guys like you in the locker room, and all the players love hanging out with you after practice and games---you are a 'good teammate' and therefore we are bringing you back next year". Sure, that'll be the day, and when that day comes we can pay more attention to good teammates. If there is any sport where every player has specific tasks to perform---all by himself---it is football. Maybe in basketball and hockey there may well be a lot of teamwork, but not in football. If each player performs his task well, and all these other uncontrollable factors don't destroy your chances, then the team will do well. Labeling failure in football games as lack of effort or no teamwork is just used as an opportunity to character assassinate players in a manner with which they cannot defend themselves. Terrell Owens, absent a microphone in his face, rarely talks to anyone on the team or during practice. That, to outsiders proves he is a bad teammate. Funny but almost all former teammates say he is a good teammate because he does his job in practice and on the field and while no one gets close to him, he "has never done anything to me". Fair enough.
I don't like senseless character assassination. For fans and media commentators to pretend they can measure, by watching the game who, is trying hard and who is not, who is a good teammate and who is not, is shameful. Can anyone imagine the preposterousness of some football player in a post game press conference emitting the following: "I fumbled three times because I don't have good teammates.....I missed tackles because I don't think Honschinivel is a good teammate, we are not good friends........I threw the ball badly because I don't particularly like that receiver and didn't want him to catch it.........I can't play well out there because Sludge never speaks to me in the locker room or goes places with me after the game....." and so it could go on. A good teammate on a football team stays in shape, and carries out his individual assignments during a game with quality execution. That is a good teammate. Period. In fact, the player who concentrates on just that is probably the best teammate possible. Obviously you don't want a player to personally bother another player on the team and the coaches are there to put a stop to that. If that sort of thing is going on much at all I am just unaware of it.
Games are lost because of poor game plans and poor execution, both of which get mixed with all of these uncontrollable factors listed earlier and that is why the best of us can still only manage to predict the outcome of individual games about 63% of the time. Maybe the smartest fans just enjoy the game and when asked to predict in advance who will win----they flip a coin. I wonder, if you simply only bet on games of those teams playing each other who are in the top half of the standings, or the bottom half of the standings, I wonder then what the winning percentage of picking a winner might be. Tossing the coin might be right up there, because talent and coaching becomes less of a factor.
Feeling as I do about the above, one can see why I root for teams because of individual players or coaches that I like. It just gives me something more tangible to grab on to. The composition of teams change so much now, from year to year, that following and rooting for individuals gives me some continuity from year to year. This converts my rooting into something more like in Tennis or Golf or Track or other such individual sports.
In the last analysis each to his own when it comes to sports. I really shouldn't even be a fan of football---there are too many severe injuries for it to be considered legitimate entertainment any more. If this continues perhaps we can call the stadiums coliseums, the players gladiators, and Philly-type fans given season tickets to all the games----you know, just get real about the whole business.
