Coming from an undergrad school with a reputation for strong football home-field advantage, I get the importance of fan-noise. Not being able to communicate is a huge disadvantage to an opposing quarterback. What goes along with that is the idea that you're as loud as you possibly can be while your team is on defense, then you shut the fuck up on offense and let your quarterback operate. I love that it's part of the game. What I don't understand is who is gaining the advantage with all this vuvuzela crap? As far as I can tell, it's constant and doesn't vary with what's actually going on in the game and it seems less to do with home field advantage than just being indiscriminately annoying. Since it's disruptive to any team that isn't South Africa, it stands to reason that it could bring down the quality of play for all the visiting teams; and unless the South Africans have been pulling off some Parcells-esque jet engine training to prepare for this, it could be bringing down their level of play as well, which just seems dumb. I guess I just don't see the point - home field advantage should be managed intelligently and the vuvuzela just doesn't scream "intelligence."
(stole from another forum I attend). Any way, I belong firmly to the camp that all disruptive noise in a stadium should be man made with no props whatsoever. Wasn't it the Seahawks that got a punishment for recording and pumping in crowd noise over the PA system?
I am proud to say I will not be attending ANY of the World Cup matches because of those fucking vuvuzelas. The only reason they are there in the first place is because S.A. has 11 official languages, so it's difficult to create any sort of fan song. Also, please blame Danny Jordaan and Irvin Khoza (the two clowns who were in charge of the 2010 Bid and who could very much have stamped this out LONG ago) for this and that idiot Van Schalkwyk for mass-producing it and also Sepp Blatter for being a stupid old prick who cannot die fast enough. My biggest hope is that ALL air horns will be banned for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil (they ALSO have a smaller but similar device for noise-making) so they don't ruin another tournament. You think it's bad during matches? Try having to hear cunts blowing the fucking things until 3am and then starting up again at 7am and then you can talk about it being annoying.
The only thing that can save redeem the vuvuzela...techno remix: Just kidding! ...It's actually worse.
Yeah, it'd really interrupt my sex every night. Boy, I feel for ya. I have nothing to add, instead I'll link you to the laziest, but funniest picture I've come across. I should note that it's hilarious to see the schism between the liberal and conservatives in this thread. I got to 4chan for the first time in months and I see this...
That video of England vs. Argentina is exactly what its all about. Talk about an exciting atmosphere. I'm not really a soccer fan, but just seeing those kinds of crowds makes the whole sport for me, especially the World Cup. It just sucks that none of that is present at this world cup because of the endless buzzing.
Finally there seems to be a solution. http://www.theage.com.au/world-cup-...n-by-equaliser-20100615-yda7.html?autostart=1
These Gabriel's Horns Of Ear Rape just keep amazing me. The popularity of these things is simply unreal over there. I could listen to a billion didgeridoos played inside Notre Dame cathedral at once before I could listen to one of these vuvuzelas, yet here we have cab drivers toting these shitty plastic horns around in guitar cases like they're a fucking Martin Dreadnought. It's about a rhythmic as listen to television static. This is the best South Africa can do? COME ON. There's some seriously cool-sounding shit coming from that corner, make no mistake. Nobody on earth can harmonize like these guys:
The "play the inverted wave of a vuzuzela" will only sort of work. It's not going to completely get rid of the sound, but it'll help tone it down. Same with the equalizer, although it's incredibly unlikely that the average consumer is going to have a TV EQ capable of picking out specific frequencies like that.
First, the vuvuzelas only cover up the fan noise if the fans are fucking boring. I distinctly remember hearing chants during the USA vs. England match. But I digress. I'll throw in my two cents on the subject, since I'm one of the members on the board who admits to being a former soccer player. I played at a high level. Granted, I never had a cap for my country, but my backup my junior year of college had played in numerous World Cup Qualifers, and I've played in from of 10,000+ fans a couple times. If there had been vuvuzelas in the stadiums then, it wouldn't have changed a thing. The only thing that they're affecting right now are the excuses for players when they're out of position. At that level, it should be nearly automatic to know where you should be or be looking for an opponent. Take, for instance, England's goal against USA. Ricardo Clarke is a good five yards out of position, which led to Gerrard's goal. Even if that match is being played in an empty stadium, England still scores. If the players' natural instincts aren't there, he'll still be a step behind, and failure will be imminent. If you say no vuvuzelas, then you're going to have to ban all artificial noise makers, which means no beating drums to add to the atmosphere. Keep them, and don't try and Europeanize a world sport.
What you don't seem to realize is that people can give a shit less how vuvuzelas affect the players. They're of secondary importance here. Didn't affect you? Great, but not particularly significant. It's the fans that matter. The majority of them find the horns physically painful, and almost everyone considers really goddamn annoying. Now, you can adopt an attitude of "fuck the fans!!!", but that's a bad position to take. Fans are extraordinarily fickle, especially nowadays, and upsetting them means losing millions of dollars of revenue. They have made their position clear, so the vuvuzela has to go.
That's bullshit as it is the fans blowing the fucking things in the first place. And football fans are anything but 'fickle'. For you people in the USA, footy may be an occasional indulgence but in the rest of the world it is a way of life. We play it throughout the week, our social events are arranged around our teams weekly games. I'm sure it is the same with NFL, you wouldn't abandon you're support becuase one tournament allowed a slightly annoying trumpet. Anyway, I stand my my support for the Vuvuzela, it's fun, didn't expect a lot of Americans to have the patience to follow the whole cup anyway, it was always something that would put you off. And to those Americans I know who are sticking with and enjoying the tournament, Kudos.
The small minority. However, it's the majority that counts here. No one freaking cares if 2,000 fans enjoy themselves more, but 80,000 are pissed off, and 10,000 of those decide to never attend a soccer game ever again. That's not just a horrible business approach, but a really shitty way to resolve problems. Accommodating the extravagant, entitled requests of the minority over the reasonable pleas of the majority? That's lunacy at its finest. Save the speech. I was born in Moscow, (which, last I checked, is in Europe) and played soccer passionately from the time I was 4 years old to when I was 9. And eventually, I realized basketball, and later, boxing/MMA, were more exciting sports for me. And the idea that sports fans aren't fickle has been debunked numerous times. In the US, there was a major league baseball lockout in 1995. People cried about what they would do or watch in the meantime. But you know what happened? In that year, many baseball fans turned to basketball, football, hockey, golf, tennis, etc. When Major League Baseball came back on the air, its crowds and television ratings were a fraction of what they were before. So much for loyalty to "America's Past-time". If you think the same can't and won't happen to soccer if they piss off their fans, you are sorely mistaken.
I don't really give a shit about soccer, but I can apply this to other situations. KIMaster's comments about fans are spot on. People watch sports as enjoyment. If something is ruining that enjoyment, then why bother? If you lose fans, you lose revenue and you might as well be playing down at the local park if you follow that through ad infinitum. Many sports have banned various items and activities over the years in the name of preserving enjoyment for the majority of fans. Even the Mexican wave was a casualty. That's way less annoying that those stupid trumpet things. And the most the wave ever did was block your view or get you covered in garbage. But secondly, while I've played teams sports I don't claim to be an expert. However, in my experience, good teams in any team sport talk to each other. A lot. If something's stopping the ability to do that, it hampers your game. And I think this is especially important where you've got a team of guys who might only play together in that unit infrequently. If I'm seeing the cream of any sport play, I want to see their best game.
I think the African people are just glad we're all able to say a single word in their native language that isn't a click. How do they show their happiness? VUVUZELA.