I Hate London Heathrow, But

I love this.

It's Posts Like This That Make the Turdlog Number One

A high-caliber persuasive writer anticipates criticism and nullifies it before it is levied. Five days have proved to be insufficient for my astute readers to formulate the obvious objection to my overtime denunciation. I count my blessings.

In the playoffs it is necessary to have a winner and loser, so that one team may advance to the next stage of competition (or be crowned champions). This may require overtime. In such a case, I prefer basketball's method: more time is added to the clock, and there is no sudden death, whereby the first team to score wins. The NFL features a sudden death, and I remember hearing that something like 70% of coin-toss winners choose to receive the ball first and go on to win the game.

It's too easy in football, when all that is needed is a single score, to get that score and win. Lots of sideline passes until field goal range, then runs up the middle, and toward the middle of the field, will get you there. Why not just flip a coin and let that decide the outcome?

(The success of this overtime field goal scoring strategy got me thinking a while back about why teams don't use it all the time, and frankly I don't have a good answer. It's possible that, done enough times, a sideline pass's susceptibility, not just to interception but to interception and defensive counter-touchdown, render the technique too risky.)

Oh well. I do admit that sudden death basketball would be a riot. But I think that when overtime is necessary, the rules and strategy of the game should be sullied as little as possible. In football, sudden death changes the game too much. In NCAA football, overtime is a different game entirely. The head coaches should just arm-wrestle for it. Hockey and soccer shootouts are exciting, but if I wanted to watch an individual sport, I'd watch tennis. Tennis, on the other hand, should follow baseball's ideal overtime example: just keep doing what you're doing until one team or side blinks.

Completed What Was Assigned

Overtime represents everything that is god-awful about America. And I'm not even talking about the workplace, although I could be. I'm talking, as I have been known to do in the past, about football.

Or any sport, really. Whatever happened to ties? Two teams get out there, beat the crap out of one another, and the final gun sounds with the score even. I suggest shaking hands and calling it a day. Sports are supposed to be, among other things, a metaphor for life. We force children to play them knowing full-well that they will never be good enough to make a living playing them. But we do it for their fitness, and to get them out of our their guardians' hair for a little while, and to teach them lessons. Think of a strategy. Work hard. Listen to your coach. Cooperate with your teammates. Expect a concrete solution to every problem within three hours.

This last lesson is, of course, a terrible one for adult-life preparation. Things often don't work out the way one wants them to, but they rarely work out disastrously. The mediocre results far outnumber the solid wins and losses. The ability to make what good one can out of imperfect results is about the most valuable one a human can have. Sports today are quite unrealistic in that sense. Football, basketball, and hockey feature overtimes. Baseball has extra innings, which is slightly cooler, but numbers of outs as opposed to clock time has always been baseball's biggest (and possibly only) advantage over other sports. Tennis goes on hasta la victoria.

Why have most sports adopted OT? Certainly increased commercial TV time has much to do with it, to which I have nothing to say in this post and everything to say in a later one about how money is everything in our society but doesn't need to be. But a baser sports fan than I would answer that neither team, or team's fans, are happy with a tie, so why not fill the glass halfway, as opposed to leaving it empty? Keep ties and other life-lessons for little league; TV sports are the territory of dollars and fantastic gratification.

I disagree. A hunger is built after a tie. Both teams will pursue the rematch with an augmented sense of having something to prove. It's delayed gratification, yes, so I understand if it won't sell, but a little coitis interruptus can be a wonderful thing.

Let me conclude by saying that as awful as some aspects of pro sports are, they are in summation nowhere near as ridiculous as the fantasy sport Quidditch and its Golden Snitch. People should think things through before putting them down on paper for others to read. That's the Turdlog's stand: are you in good hands?