Posted on 08/03/2004 3:12:33 PM PDT by swilhelm73
I would agree if the box time were limited to yellow card fouls. Maybe set up different rules for fouls, identifying which would result in penalty time. That would be interesting.
Players are tossed for red cards anyway (and for 2 yellows in the same game). Putting a player in the box for every foul would really stop the flow of the game.
watch the flames come :-)
Possibly because there is not a single country on the planet that fields a professional football team that can play with the US. And the only possibility in baseball is Cuba, but assuming their dominance against American college kids would equate to even being able to play with the best baseball team in the US is a stretch. Beating the Baltimore Orioles in a few games during a season where they lost 100 games isn't that impressive. Additionally, these would be professional championships, and the Cuban National Team is not a professional team, technically.
The one sport where an argument could be made that the team we claim is "World Champion" isn't would be basketball, but it should be noted that the other teams we play in competition like the Olympics are anchored by NBA players who would not be eligible were there to be a World Championship where the rest of the world was asked to send their best professional team instead of an "All-star" team.
I consider the addiction to scoring part of the lack of fondness for subtlety. American fans like seeing points on the board, when an American fans walks into the room and asks who's winning they don't want to hear about which team is controlling the ball more often in the offensive zone and causing the other side to run around in their own end in a panic, they want to hear a score.
You can really see it in baseball fans. Some baseball fans pray for 1-0 pitchers duels, they love the intensity of any at bat being able to win the game. Most baseball fans think 1-0 games are boring. The former have what it takes to watch soccer and hockey (they probably also dig Sergio Leone movies), the later are your more typical American fan.
Team sports require practice with the team as a group to achieve best results. Surely the author doesn't suggest a football team can achieve greatness on offense or defense with each player practicing by themselves? The same with basketball, maybe the author believes all 5 players can just run individual drills and magically become a good team?
What you've said here is true about hockey, but I don't get that same impression about soccer. The problem with soccer is that a "flukey bounce" rarely results in a goal -- simply because the playing area is so large. In hockey, a flukey bounce will often result in a goal simply because 1) the game moves much faster, and 2) the playing surface is actually "smaller" than its measurements would dictate -- because players move much faster on skates than any athlete would move on feet.
Hockey is different than most other sports in that it is primarily a "transition" game, not a "possession" game. Football is purely a possession game, and basketball is nearly so. Soccer is more of a transition game than these two, but for the most part goals are scored as the result of methodical ball movement instead of rapid transition from defense to offense.
There's no doubt in my mind that hockey's the best sport around. In fact, I'm going out right now to play hockey on inline skates for a couple of hours. LOL.
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didn't say it's beyond the American sportsfan's ability to fathom. I said it's more subtle than they want to watch.
More subtle than setting up a tailing changeup after coming hard inside?
More subtle than the applied leverage at the line of scrimmage that allows the RB to look like a star?
My point is, there are subtleties in all sports. So it is rather an empty argument to say that soccer is on some sort of higher aesthetic level.
Good points. The one bad side of a penalty box rule is that we'd see a dramatic escalation of that oh-so-girly-and-gay strategy of having players flopping around on the ground like fish in an attempt to draw a call whenever someone makes contact with them.
I wonder whether "positional mechanics" applies to ice hockey. My sons are avid ice hockey fans, but this is because they play roller hockey. Whenever I watch the NHL, all I see about 80% of the time are pucks being shot out of the reach of team mates "in position" for a better shot on goal. There seems to be an awful lot of skating around in ice hockey that is pointless.
Flukey bounces are harder to come by in soccer because the field is huge and flat. They need seamed glass ;). Generally in soccer your flukey bounce is more likely to be an opposing player tangling his feet and falling on his face, that'll give you a chance to get in close on the goalie and get a scoring opportunity.
Have fun out there.
And all the best players are from South America and Africa, aren't they?
Definitely more subtle than setting up pitches, largely because every player is doing that same kind of mental combat with every other player every moment of the game. In baseball it's just the pitcher vs the batter and only on the pitches. In soccer and hockey you're trying to teach the other player to expect every aspect of your movement so that you can do one thing different and leave him behind.
When was the last time you actually heard an NFL broadcaster talk about applied leverage at the line more deeply than "you've got to get under your opponent"? While the actual battle in the trenches of football is highly intricate and subtle it never gets discussed in the coverage.
I didn't say there aren't subtleties in all sports. I said there are MORE subtleties in soccer and hockey and the subtleties are deeper and require more dedication by the fan to learn, and are also more necessary to understand to understand the game. It's not an empty argument, it's the raw truth, and I'm not saying it's on a higher aesthetic level. I'm saying it's more subtle than the average American sports fan is willing to watch.
I think that was called the XFL. Didn't fly.
Well, this is a ridiculous statement. Do you know how many people go to baseball games and watch signs being flashed for sacrifices, hit and runs, straight steals, and actually try to intrepret them?
For years, nearly everyone in the ballpark was keeping score - down to the very last detail. I'll bet you could take 20,000 scorecards out of a game at Ebbet's Field, and they'd all read the same at the end of the game.
Yeah, Americans don't get the "subtlety"....we've been watching "pivot plays", "double steals", "williams' shifts" forever. They are "subtle" to you maybe, but they are part of an EXCITING game to the rest of us.
I had the pleasure of going to two WS games last year. The one, where Alex Gonzalez won the game, was the most exciting sports moment I've ever witnessed.
And that includes countless PSU/Nebraska, PSU/Alabama, PSU/Pitt, PSU/ND football CLASSICS.
Baseball is our National Pastime because it's timeless. What gets overlooked is that when played right, in the right moment, it's the most exciting game ever created. Soccer on the other hand, is hopelessly boring, regardless of it's "subtlety." We can handle "subtlety", we just don't like "BORING."
Absolutely there is positional mechanics applied to ice hockey. Look at what's going on inbetween the passer and the guy that missed the pass, most of the time the puck is going in the wrong place it's because the passer is trying to avoid the opponents sticks. In hockey having your stick right in front you and extended out can be two vastly different things that completely alter the game. the skating around isn't pointless, they're trying to setup plays, trying to gain room to manuever, trying to convince the opponents to do something dumb. That's exactly what I mean by the subtlety of the games, if you've lived the game long enough to catch the hand shoulder and head movements you see that there's never a single pointless stride or glide in hockey, you're always trying to get in position to make the play, and trying to get the other team out of position to make the play. Where it gets slow in the NHL is that the players there are good enough where accomplishing the later is very difficult, and it's much harder to accomplish the former if you can't accomplish the later.
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