The Sports Gripe Thread

I would add the normal "Mods, delete if this sucks" caveat, except they don't need my permission, so there you go.

There are some things in sports that just make zero fucking sense to me, starting with tonight:

Why the hell do they have the National Championship game on a Monday night? Especially when it's on late on the East coast. Hello, people want to watch and drink. OK, people want to drink and watch. I would rather have watched this on Saturday than whatever bowl game was on.

Same deal on the Super Bowl: Why the fuck is the game on Sunday? So the majority of the workforce can come into work on Monday and not feel like doing a fucking thing?

Baseball: Why, oh why, are there 162 games? Why does the post season extend into November now?

And then the worst one of all: Which feminazi complained about the camera man panning in too much on the girl's asses during the women's college volleyball telecasts? That's the whole reason there's an audience. Trust me, 99% of the viewers of women's volleyball on TV are guys that want to look at nice asses in tight shorts. A year ago, it was asses galore. Now? It's lots of ponytail shots.

Seriously, which one would you rather look at:



Focus: What drives you nuts or makes no sense about any random sport to you.

 

Stop bitching about fighting in hockey, you pussy. It is a part of the game. Always has been, always will be and if you don't like it may I suggest watching Latinos run up and down an airport runway-sized field making a shot on goal every Tuesday. Hockey is a smash-mouth sport, just like rugby and lacrosse. Rugby players gouge eyes and kick testicles in scrums, and lacrosse players consider it an accomplishment if you crush a guy's clavicle with an overhand tomahawk. Sack up.

 

Hey Stern, stop telling your three zebras to fix so many goddamn crucial play-off games. We know that to the right big-market team (often the LA Lakers) draws more money, or a team with a budding superstar (Heat with Dwayne Wade) will get more interest and merchandise sales down the line, but have a little bit of integrity and look at the big picture.

It kills interest in the league and makes games seem like pointless contrivances that fans would rather watch at home if they know their team is probably going to get screwed. And you know what? That's exactly what has happened.

Television audiences for the NBA are now bigger than ever, but the revenue from ticket sales, a team's main source of revenue, has dried up. The fixing isn't the only reason, but a lot of the hardcores that used to buy season tickets cite that as a reason they no longer do.

Oh, and big networks that show basketball games? Fuck you idiots. I don't want to see the same two boring, big-market teams/teams with name superstars play isos against one another for 48 minutes.

Try getting two EXCITING teams in there more often, like Dallas and Oklahoma City. Thankfully, the Internet has made you guys more obsolete than ever.

 

Hey CBC,

Think you could stop pandering to the Toronto and Montreal fans constantly? You fucks have some of the worst bias in NHL broadcasting. I understand you have to be nicer to the Canadian teams, but the shit talking you do about the American teams that's just blatantly false or hypocritical during the SAME GAME is mental. It makes me want to drive a spike through the TV.

FSN has some of the best announcers depending on your market. The Pittsburgh guys are great. They will actually say a Penguin did something wrong if they did. It's not just butt-pirating praise for 60 minutes. The southern US teams are hit or miss. It's called a puck and a net, can we just run with that? No need for cage, biscuit, cookie, etc.

 

Hey USC,
Do me a favor and stop shitting the bed every time our school has had something nice going on around here. While it was awesome to win the SEC East this year, the following two games were perfect examples of Gamecock futility. Other than the baseball team, I am really beginning to wonder if my alma mater is ever going to be able to win.

 

OK...so LeBron fucked up with the whole Decision thing. Get over it already. He got and took some bad advice. He had semi-noble intentions in the fact that he took all the money and donated it.

But Jesus, the Decision the show was a bad idea. The Decision to get the fuck out of Cleveland was not.

And I am tired of professional athletes whining about having to play on Christmas or play an 18-game season. Get real jobs with real salaries and then complain. For $25 million a season, you're just lucky you're not giving a Donkey Show on the mound of Wrigley field 5 nights a week with 2 shows on Saturday.

And that fucker from Auburn was down.

 

I know that the following isn't very popular with Baseball purist's... But fuck them anyway.

I'm sick of fucking umpires. I know they are human, I get it. They make mistakes. I have no problem with them being human. What I cannot fucking understand is the inconsistency from umpire to umpire of the strike zone. As far as I'm concerned they should all be replaced by a green screen behind home plate.
It's eye opening to watch a baseball game when the pitch tracker is on. It is fucking laughable how wrong the umps are, and how they feel the need to impose their will upon the pitcher, batter, and the game. (and don't get me started on umpires who won't check with the 1st or 3rd base umpires on check swing calls)
Name another sport where such an important facet of the game relies on subjectivity? It is the only sport where players (especially pitchers) keep dossiers on umpires.

And for all those historians that want to tell me that "they are a part of the game" Fuck off. You know what else was a part of the game? No blacks, spitballs, cheating, drugs, and the Expos.

 

You mean besides how the Ol' Dongslinger got knocked out of the playoffs last year without having a possession in overtime? Because that sparked alot of the outrage that led to them changing it.

If the goal is to make sure both teams have a chance to touch the ball, how come a touchdown on the opening possession ends the game? That defeats the whole purpose of instituting the rules in the first place.

So if the defending team scores a safety, the game is over. If the team with the ball first kicks a field goal, the game continues. But if a team recovers an onside kick at the start of overtime, they can kick a field goal to end the game because the onside kick counts an "opportunity to possess the ball". And if no clear winner emerges, a two man sack race will be held on consecutive Sundays until a winner can be determined.

What I'd like to see is one team kick a field goal and then intercept a pass on the other team's possession. But instead of just downing the ball, fumble it back to the offense. I'm pretty sure the universe would explode.

In short: Stupid rule change. Should've left it as it was, or adopted some form of the NCAA's system.

 

This is more of an announcer/analyst thing, but I'm getting pretty fucking tired of big plays in football games being referred to "like a game of Madden!" or "like a video game!" Because if those fuckers ever played Madden on All-Madden, they'd realize the level of big plays in Madden are generally the same level of big plays in real life. Which isn't really shocking because Madden is basically programmed to try and real life.

Also, another announcer/analyst/meta thing. I'm not a huge baseball watcher, and I'll never ever get into an argument about baseball. But I think it is retarded how when baseball games are announced its "This pitcher vs this pitcher". It makes no fucking sense. One guy pitching really doesn't effect the other guy at all, especially if it is a DH. I'd understand if they said "This pitcher vs this awesome batter" or vice versa but they don't. They don't even do that in football, where you know the QBs are actually going against each other the whole entire game. Especially in baseball there are so many other factors that can fuck-up a pitcher, catcher, umpire, small field, big field, and let's not forget the speed of their defense.

 

THIS.

I can't even explain to you how excited I was when I watched Mark Sanchez sack Tom Brady twice yesterday, especially after the job he did on Reggie Wayne last week.

 

Give them a break. They have to work seven months a year, sometimes up to four hours a day for the peasant salary of over $250,000 a year. Leave the poor darlings alone, their lives suck enough.

I think one of my favourite things of all time is when these fat, lazy fucks back in 2000 went on strike demanding more money. When they signed a mass resignation as a power play, the league gladly accepted it and then hired minor league umpires who were more than happy to step up for half of what these jobless tools made.

(sung to the theme of "Take Me out to the Ball Game")

Ta-ken out of the ball game! Ta-ken out of our jobs!
Thought we had power and lots of clout!
We didn't think it's one strike and yer out,
So it's look...for work where we fiiiiind it...
Did somebody say "Sandlot Ball"?
We said "Hey...we...quit. Wait, we don't!"
We sure blew that call!!!!

 

Since I've gotten quite a few messages and reps, let me clarify what I said about what I said up there. The QBs are actually in the entire time unless someone gets injured. No set-up QBs, reliever QBs or closer QBs. Barring injury the same QB is in the game the entire time. Not so with baseball. That's what I meant. As opposed to "This pitcher vs this pitcher" where as one can/will go 5-7 innings and the other could go all 9. Its stupid. Thanks for thinking about it guys.

 

No single position in any team sport has more influence over the outcome of a game than a starting pitcher in baseball. That's why people talk about "this pitcher vs. that pitcher" because by and large, those are going to be the ones who determine how the game goes.

You probably don't bet baseball, but if you did, you'd realize that the lines reflect this. Writing "The A's vs. the Yankees" is much less informative than writing "Brett Anderson vs. Sergio Mitre."

 

I totally agree. Trying to say a team game comes down to "Tom Brady vs. Mark Sanchez" is a crock of shit. It's like I explain to people when I play volleyball: I'm a good hitter. I can hit outside, I can hit middle, I can even hit back row. But it doesn't matter ONE FUCKING BIT if I don't have a setter. It matters even less if there is no decent pass to go to the setter. I can't set myself. You take a horrible team and put Karch Kiraly or Misty May on it, they will still be horrible. Same thing with football, baseball, and any other team sport. That's why it's a TEAM SPORT.

 

Thread is getting a little off-roaded here. You guys are arguing against something I'm not even arguing for. Distilled Sports Gripe. The presentation of a baseball game says "this pitcher vs this pitcher" which I think is stupid because of all the reasons Nom and 100 just said in addition to, they don't even play the entire game. It's a team sport.

I brought up the QBs in football because even though the QB plays the whole entire game, they really don't overall say for every game unless the big names come out "this qb vs this qb." I was just underlying the fact the baseball thing is stupid.

Now...take a deep breath, breathe in, breathe out. We okay? Okay. Good. Read carefully gentlemen.

 

Actually, as paradoxical as it may sound, baseball is an individual sport.. Think about it.

How much team interaction is really going on? A little bit between the pitcher and catcher, but not much. A great pitcher and a decent catcher who have never played with one another are going to be statistically almost exactly as good as a great pitcher and great catcher who have played with one another for a decade.

When a player goes up to bat? That's just himself, no one else. When the defense catches a ball? That's just an individual player, no one else.

That is also a central reason to why stats have completely "solved" quantifying player performance in baseball, something they aren't even close to doing in either football or basketball. Someone can watch baseball for 40 years and do a much worse job predicting player and team success than a guy who has never watched baseball, but knows and understands how to apply the relevant stats.

So Nom Chompsky was completely correct in calling out your post; since baseball is a team sport, presenting it as a battle between pitchers makes sense, even if they don't go against one another head-to-head.

 

My biggest current sports gripe is how the NFL keeps pushing back the season. I don't want to wait until the 1st 3rd of September has passed before I get to start watching games. The NFL should always start the first Sunday of September.

Other sports gripes is that the NBA playoffs take way too long. They should return the first round to a best of five instead of best of seven and not have so many days between games. They should also change the Finals format to 2-2-1-1-1.

 

This is a little off topic, but the reason statisticians are able to quantify player performance and use tools like sabremetrics successfully in baseball is because there is a discrete range of outcomes when a player goes up to bat. Excluding freakish things like when randy johnson hit that bird, a batter can get a strike, ball, single, double, triple, hr or foul. The discrete probability mass function is what enables baseball performance metrics to quantify a single players contribution to the number of runs scored in a game. You can't to the same in other team sports.

 

That doesn't make any sense; you can say the exact same thing about football and basketball.

When a quarterback throws a pass, it's either complete for X yards, incomplete or a penalty is thrown, right? When a player shoots a basket, it's even simpler, because he either hits it for 2 or 3 points, and/or gets fouled, or misses, right?

And yet, sabremetrics (I dislike the word because it's so pretentious for something so simple) are far less successful with those two sports than with baseball. In fact, if you read articles by "sabremetricians", you they list "team interactions" as the primary reason their success in predicting baseball has not extended to either basketball or football.

That's much harder to model than the a sport where it's essentially all individual performance.