Quotulatiousness

June 23, 2014

World Cup sour grapes for England

Filed under: Britain, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

While the England team may not need to worry about what to do in the elimination round (because they’re not going to get that far), James Delingpole claims that this is the greatest World Cup ever, and offers five reasons he’s right:

1. Filthy, cheating foreigners are conforming satisfyingly to stereotype.

The reason England are already out of the competition, claimed Wayne Rooney over the weekend, is that we are far too nice. If ever we wish to win again at the game we invented, he suggested, then we will have to learn to cheat like all the filthy foreigners with their effeminate hairstyles, their casual fouling and their extravagant diving.

But obviously we can’t do that sort of thing because then we’d look like the kind of people who still live with their mothers and eat garlic on toast and ride around piazzas on mopeds.

Which is why we prefer to lose because it shows our national superiority. Anyway, football is fixed now — so really it’s not up to the players who wins any more anyway, it’s decided by the betting syndicates in India and Pakistan and Ghana.

[…]

3. It has given the Scots something not to grumble about

Nothing — not a warming draught of deep fried Irn Bru (copyright Michael Deacon) nor the skirl of pipes nor the reassuring “pit” of the latest welfare cheque landing on the floor of your council flat — gladdens a Scotsman’s heart quite so much as the sight of England losing in a major (or indeed minor) sporting event.

It’s quite possible that, had England won this World Cup, the backlash would have driven the whole of Scotland into voting “Yes” in the forthcoming referendum. Those of us who love the Scots and dearly wish them to remain part of the Union, therefore, should rejoice in Britain’s tactical defeat in the World Cup.

[…]

5. Nazi Pope Reefer Man

Do I really need to explain?

My favourite Twitter post from the start of the World Cup now seems prescient:

June 22, 2014

“Draw Play” Dave on how Minnesota got the Super Bowl in 2018

Filed under: Business, Football, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:20

I probably don’t need to say that the Super Bowl is a big ticket item … that much must be clear even to people who don’t have any conscious awareness of the NFL. Part of the push for a new football stadium in Minnesota was the hope that the new stadium would allow Minneapolis/St. Paul to bid on (and hope to win) the competition to host the Super Bowl in the newly completed stadium. The NFL being what it is, this meant a lot of “sweeteners” had to be offered to entice the league up to the deep freeze of Minnesota in the middle of winter. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been to Minnesota in winter, so maybe I’m just being swayed by pro-winter propaganda, but I believe it gets a tad cooler in the land of the ten thousand frozen lakes than it does in, say, Miami.)

“Draw Play” Dave Rappoccio admits he’s a bit late to this story, but I rather liked it anyway:

Click to see the full cartoon

Click to see the full cartoon

Again, older news that I never got to, but deserved a joke.

Has anyone actually looked up the requirements for cities to host the Super Bowl? The NFL is shameless in how is screws cities over and I can’t believe cities sign up for it.

June 19, 2014

The Washington R*dsk*ns

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Football, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:39

Robert Tracinski on the real story behind the Washington Redskins trademark dispute:

… I think everyone should be terrified by the new ruling by the US Patent Office cancelling the team’s trademark.

The ruling was based on a dubious argument that “redskins” is a slur against Native Americans. Well, then maybe we’d better rename the state of Oklahoma, which drew its name from Choctaw words that mean “red people.” Or maybe we should petition the US Army to decommission the attack helicopter it named after a people it defeated in 1886. Then again, forget I mentioned it. I don’t want to give anyone ideas.

This name-bullying has become a kind of sport for self-aggrandizing political activists, because if you can force everyone to change the name of something — a sports team, a city, an entire race of people — it demonstrates your power. This is true even if it makes no sense and especially if it makes no sense. How much more powerful are you if you can force people to change a name for no reason other than because they’re afraid you will vilify them?

Given the equivocal history of the term “redskins” and the differing opinions — among Native Americans as well as everyone else — over whether it is offensive, this was a subjective judgment. […] When an issue is subjective, it would be wise for the government not to take a stand and let private persuasion and market pressure sort it out.

Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? This ruling happened precisely because the campaign against the Redskins has failed in the court of public opinion. The issue has become the hobby horse of a small group of lefty commentators and politicians in DC, while regular Washingtonians, the people who make up the team’s base of fans and customers, are largely indifferent. So the left resorted to one of its favorite fallbacks. If the people can’t be persuaded, use the bureaucracy — in this case, two political appointees on the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

Update: Helpfully, journalists are already compiling lists of offensive team names that justice demands be changed, including the Minnesota Vikings and the Fighting Irish.

The NFL conspiracy theorist

Filed under: Football, Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

“Draw Play” Dave Rappoccio is running a series of cartoons on the various sub-groups of NFL fans. This week’s subject is the Conspiracy Theorist:

Draw Play - The Conspiracy Theorist
Click to see full cartoon.

He also talks about the mentality of the conspiracy theorist fan in some detail:

A part of me struggles to accept that people this deluded actually exist, but they do. I’ve heard stories, and I’ve seen the occasional online post about it. These people are few, but not fictional. There are actually people who think the NFL is scripted.

Like most conspiracy theories it sounds absolutely stupid at first, then part of you might go “well, I guess that was kinda perfect that it happened just that way”, then you think about it a little more and you realize that yup, it’s still stupid and the logic falls apart. But some people don’t get past that second stage. I can’t figure out why. The best guess I can muster is that most of the fans are somehow bitter about the way their team loses or something.

[…]

But some people legit think it’s scripted like pro wrestling. These people are…I can’t defend them. They are deluded. For everything that sounds like it might make some sense, lots of other things just make it feel so forced. The NFL has been around for a long time, and started as a small time game. It has grown into the giant it is not overnight, but over decades. There has never, ever, been any evidence that has come out to suggest it’s scripted. No retired referees, no disgruntled employees, nothing. Over decades. Come on. There are so many people covering the league now, so many media members, so many pundits, so many sources. The NFL being scripted would be a huge story, but none of them have ever investigated it? Nothing? No player, current or former, EVER, in all this time, has come out and said things weren’t right. None have even suggested it. You think in a league with players treated as poorly as they are in medical coverage that one wouldn’t want to blow the lid off the biggest sports story ever? There is no evidence of scripted play, and if you think it is, you are dumb. We are not sheeple, you are gullible & trying to find deeper issues where they don’t exist.

I forwarded the link to a friend of mine who is emphatically not a sports fan, but who has floated the occasional theory about “the fix” being in in all professional sports in one way or another. His response was entertaining:

As for the article, I’m not entirely sure of his point. Is he arguing that pro sports cannot possibly be fixed because the key games are often so boring? The author so wants to believe in his fantasy land where men wearing shiny tight pants can bum-pat and hug each other without feeling a little bit weird about it that he’s willing to overlook any possibility of there being corruption in the game. […]

Football gives the illusion of one team being better than another through its very short season. With just 16 games, you just do not have a very large sample size to gauge performance. It’s like me typing 16 words without an error: I must therefore be the world’s best typist. If the NFL season dragged on as long as the insufferable NHL season, I bet we’d see all of the teams finish much closer together in their win-loss-tie figures. With a larger sample, we’d likely see that all the teams are likely pretty much the same.

But pro sports fans really want to believe in heart and giving a-hundred-and-ten-per-cent and playing a good psychological game and putting the biscuit in the basket and all of that other crap. Even if refs and players came forward and admitted to throwing games I suspect that the fans would not want to believe them. Look how the fans keep coming back even after players’ strikes — these are people so desperate for a fix that they will put almost anything in their veins.

June 16, 2014

FIFA and the World Cup

Filed under: Americas, Bureaucracy, Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

June 14, 2014

Spain meets Nemesis (wearing Netherlands team jerseys)

Filed under: Americas, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

I didn’t watch this game, but apparently I missed quite the event. A Dutch friend of mine took to Twitter to express his joy through the course of the game:

June 11, 2014

Some interesting responses from World Cup audiences

Filed under: Soccer — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:59

The New York Times posted some responses from fans about who will win the 2014 World Cup, who they root aagainst, and who plays “the most beautiful” soccer. I found some of the answers to be of interest, and I’ve highlighted them here:

World Cup 2014 opinions

Brazil is the almost-consensus pick to win it all, with only Argentinian, Spanish, and American fans liking their national team’s chances over Brazil. The surprises come with the second answers, where most pick their national side, but Spain and Germany get a higher-than-expected vote of confidence.

When asked who they’re cheering against, there were some odd answers … who knew that the Aussies were so anti-American? Even more amazing is how anti-American the American fans are. Brazilian, French, Japanese, South Korean, and Russian fans also display an oddly bipolar attitude toward their respective national teams. Argentina hates England, aka “Dog Bites Man”, yet the English don’t seem to be reciprocating any more with their dislikes now being Russia and “Don’t Mention The War”.

In the final column, one has to assume that Australian and Japanese fans need to get their collective eyes checked…

Winnipeg Blue Bombers to honour Bud Grant with a statue

Filed under: Cancon, Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:33

Gordon Sinclair, Jr. reports in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Bud Grant - Winnipeg Blue Bomber coach

I had lost hope in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Not the team.

Not the hope of the Bombers winning a Grey Cup in my lifetime or even having a winning season.

No, I’d lost hope that my campaign to have the organization erect a statute in honour of Bud Grant and all that would represent and mean to the organization and the community, had not only failed, it had been ignored.

Board chairman Brock Bulbuck had suggested when we spoke last year that it was an appealing idea. But it was a year ago this month that I wrote the first of three columns explaining why a statute to the iconic Bomber coach should be placed outside Investors Group Field.

I went on to say I had heard there had already been talk of a statue to Grant among those tasked with honouring the team’s tradition, but the statue concept needed a nudge.

“Consider this a big nudge,” I wrote. “Furthermore, consider this: The Bombers should start a fund to commission a statue to Grant…”

A year passed.

The team, I reasoned, had more pressing matters, and gradually I lost hope the statue would happen in Grant’s lifetime, if ever.

Then last Friday an email arrived, it was a courtesy message delivered by Kim Babij-Gesell, the team’s co-ordinator of communications.

H/T to The Viking Age, who helpfully rounded up a few career highlights for Grant:

If you’re not familiar with Mr. Bud Grant, here are some astounding facts about the man:

  • 1st round draft pick in 1950 (#14 overall)
  • Played for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1951-1952
  • Played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from 1953-1956
  • Coached the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from 1957-1966
  • Coached the Minnesota Vikings from 1967-1983
  • Returned to coach the Vikings for the 1985 season
  • 1965 CFL Coach of the Year
  • 1969 NFL Coach of the Year
  • Holds the CFL record for most interceptions in a playoff game (5)
  • Member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame
  • Member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame
  • Coached the 1969 NFL Champion Vikings
  • 3rd most successful professional football coach in history (290 wins)
  • Played in the NBA for the Minneapolis Lakers (4th round draft pick)
  • Only person in history to play in both the NFL and the NBA

After looking over that huge list of accomplishments, it isn’t hard to believe that a statue would be put up in Bud Grant’s honor. The statue will be erected at Investors Group Field in Winnipeg, Manitoba this fall according to Kim Babij-Gesell, the coordinator of communications for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers

June 10, 2014

England’s World Cup team – where’s the hype?

Filed under: Britain, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

BBC News Magazine has expatriot Scot Jon Kelly wondering where all the traditional pro-England hype has gone, compared to previous World Cup campaigns:

The flags are missing from the cars. British newspapers aren’t heralding imminent victory. In pubs from Penrith to Plymouth there’s a distinct lack of gaiety, optimism and hope.

I for one couldn’t be happier.

As a Scotsman resident in London, I’ve come to dread the wildly delusional over-confidence that grips my adopted homeland every time an international football tournament is staged.

The certainty of victory. The talk of a “golden generation”. The interminable references to 1966. And the inevitable splutterings of anguish when it’s eventually confirmed on the pitch that, actually, Germany or Argentina or Portugal are superior teams after all.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like all things Anglo very much. While Scotland will always be the national side I support, in spite of our dependable rubbishness, I’ve always felt the Anyone-But-England tendency among some of my fellow Scots diminishes our status as a self-confident, modern nation.

1966 – it seems like only yesterday to many England fans

But the bellicose hysteria that envelops many in England — not to mention the irritating assumption by certain broadcasters, newspapers and advertisers that their audiences are comprised entirely of England fans — makes the team in white a difficult one for non-English folk to like, never mind cheer on.

And I say all this as someone who takes an interest in football. For those who dislike the game, it must be excruciating.

This year it’s different, however. No-one with more than a cursory knowledge of the international game seriously believes England will win.

That much is true: if they stick to the traditional formula, they’ll go out on penalties in the quarter-finals.

Invariably, a motley crew of psychologists, positive-thinking gurus and snake-oil sellers will be forming a queue outside FA headquarters, offering cures for the English penalty curse. I think there’s a simpler solution. Let’s campaign for spot kicks to be scrapped. We should use whatever arguments we think might work. I’d play the inclusion card. Penalty kicks clearly discriminate against the mentally frail. The English, who suffer from a collective, penalty-induced trauma, will always get a raw deal. How can that be fair? If FIFA wants a truly level playing field, the answer is to get rid of the pseudo-lottery of spot kicks. What we need is a proper lottery. We don’t want skill or nerve to play any part. Tossing a coin, rolling dice, drawing straws, a game of scissor-paper-stone — anything is better than a shootout. Come on Mr Blatter, give us chokers a chance.

Still one of my favourite World Cup comments (and I’m flying the English flag for the tournament):

May 31, 2014

Scott Feschuk: “How murdered might you get at the World Cup?”

Filed under: Americas, Humour, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:10

Worried about your personal safety at the World Cup in Brazil? Scott Feschuk helps you to be as worried as you should be:

Has there been much corruption?

Define “much.” If you mean scattered incidents of price gouging to line the pockets of a few local firms and politicians, then yes. But if you mean a grandly orchestrated, systemic pilfering of hundreds of millions of dollars, then yes. Brazilian soccer legend Pelé describes it as a “disgrace.” (By the way, it is mandatory that Pelé be quoted in every World Cup article, no matter the topic: RAIN COMING WEDNESDAY ACCORDING TO ‘FEELING IN KNEE,’ LEGEND DECLARES.)

[…]

If I go to the World Cup, how murdered will I get?

British papers have been playing up the threat of violent crime, depicting the cities of Brazil as crime-infested hellscapes through which there is scant hope of safe passage. The way they tell it, Rio is like Gotham before Batman or Times Square before Applebee’s.

So concern is overblown?

Oh God, no. But listen: the people of Brazil are well aware of your fears. To their credit, they’ve taken substantive action to address the issue by, um, well … they published a brochure.

What — a guide on how to react when you’re mugged at gunpoint, haha?

Yep. Brazilians have a lot of interesting traditions. They speak directly. They touch one another lightly while talking. And their criminals like to kill people who make a fuss over getting robbed. They even have a word for a mugging that escalates into a murder: latrocinios. You know people are serious about something when they have a word or phrase for it. Just ask the people at McDonald’s about Kirstie Alley and second breakfast.

What does the brochure recommend?

Remain calm. Do your best not to cry out. If you stay largely motionless and don’t say a word, it will be over soon enough. Pretty much the same guidelines to follow when losing your virginity.

May 28, 2014

England’s sorry World Cup history

Filed under: Britain, Soccer — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Published on 27 May 2014

James Richardson updates the story of England, through the occasional ups and regular downs of the English national side, from the first international ever played in 1872 (a 0-0 thriller with Scotland) to the present day, via glory in 1966 and failure, well, pretty much all the rest of the time

Yep, the World Cup is coming up soon. Here are the opening fixtures for each of the groups:

World Cup 2014 groupings

Note the joyful placement of England (#11 in the world rankings) with Uruguay (#6) and Italy (#9). Much angst to be enjoyed as the round-robin plays out… Of course, if England is looking to an uphill struggle to get out of the group stage, imagine how Costa Rica is feeling (currently #34 in the world rankings). And Canadians can’t poke too much fun … we rank #110 at the moment.

May 22, 2014

How politicians are like soccer goalkeepers

Filed under: Media, Politics, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:33

At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Stephen Gordon talks about the odd distribution of goalie decisions on penalty kicks and how they’re quite similar to politicians:

Goaltenders jumped in more than 90% penalty kicks in the sample: the frequency of staying put was only 6.3%. Kickers, on the other hand, distributed their targets in roughly equal proportions.

The goaltenders’ strategy was not wholly ineffective: when the kicker aimed left or right (71.4% of the time), goaltenders guessed correctly 6 times out of 11. But the fact remains that the frequency of the goaltender staying put (6.3%) is much smaller that the frequency of kicks aimed down the middle (28.7%).

[…]

This doesn’t mean that goaltenders should never jump. What it does mean is that goaltenders jump far too often. Why?

Bar-Eli et al suggest an explanation: ‘action bias’. This is presented as an example of Kahneman and Miller’s (1986) [PDF] ‘norm bias’. Goaltenders believe is is less bad to follow the ‘norm’ (i.e., to jump) and fail than to not jump and fail. In other words, goaltender think that jumping and missing is less costly than not jumping and missing.

Which brings us to economic policy. Politicians are continually demanded to ‘do something’ about a kaleidoscopic array of grievances, and the norm in these cases is to promise to do something. As far as politicians and most voters are concerned, doing something is better than doing nothing — even when doing nothing is the correct response.

In many cases — possibly the majority of cases — doing nothing is the smart move. A recent example is the concern about the so-called ‘skill shortage’. When firms complain that they can’t get the workers they want at the wages they are willing to pay, the correct response is to do nothing: the market response to a labour shortage is to let wages increase.

But doing nothing is almost always bad politics: it is invariably interpreted as a lack of concern, and this perceived indifference will be pounced upon by other political parties. A politician who promises to act polls better than one who promises to do nothing.

A goalkeeper who fails to jump looks like an idiot if the ball goes left or right. The fans roar their disapproval and the keeper learns that doing the dramatic-but-wrong thing is better for his reputation than the non-dramatic (but more likely to be correct) non-action. Politicians also learn that the media will turn themselves purple denouncing the lack of action (even when that’s the correct decision) and short-term polling numbers move in the wrong direction.

As Calvin Coolidge is reported to have said, “Don’t just do something; stand there.” But even if you’re right not to take action, it will be harder to bear up under the criticism of the “do something” crowd.

May 21, 2014

QotD: February in Minneapolis

Filed under: Football, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

It’s not surprising that the Wilfs, the Vikings and downtown Minneapolis business leaders want the Super Bowl in Minneapolis. Their pockets will be lined, and with more than fur.

The question is why the average Minnesotan would want the Super Bowl here in February.

We don’t invite friends and relatives to Minnesota in February. Why would we invite the world?

Especially the portion of the world that wields laptops and cameras?

You remember February, unless your therapist has helped you block it out. February is when we suffer from cabin fever and cold sores, when we lock ourselves indoors with a fire (whether we have a fireplace or not) and stare at screens until our skin matches the blue fluorescent glow emanating from the TV.

And those are the good days.

I’ve spoken to visitors who are forced to travel here during winter. They ask why we live here. They laugh at us. When Jerry Seinfeld did a show in downtown Minneapolis this winter, he referred to our skyways as “Habitrails.”

The rest of the country cannot fathom why we put ourselves through this, and let’s be honest: We can’t either when we’re in the throes of winter. We all just pile on layers and pray that, this year, summer will fall on a Saturday.

Jim Souhan, “We’re back on center stage, with frozen warts and all”, Star Tribune, 2014-05-21.

Minnesota’s new stadium to host Super Bowl LII

Filed under: Business, Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:21

As I noted in an update to yesterday’s post on Bud Grant’s 87th birthday, the NFL has awarded the hosting rights for Super Bowl LII in 2018 to the Minnesota Vikings.

Minnesota - Home of Super Bowl LII

Pretty clearly, the winning edge during the bid process was the attraction of having a brand new stadium in which to hold the event, which is why even the 300th anniversary of the founding of New Orleans came in second in the bidding. (That, plus the fact that New Orleans has already hosted the Super Bowl ten times…)

At 1500ESPN.com, Judd Zulgad talks about the winning bid:

Depending on whom you listen to, the NFL’s decision to award 2018 Super Bowl to the Twin Cities on Tuesday is either going to bring great financial gain or it’s going to be a nuisance that’s not worth the time and money that will be spent to host the game.

Making the argument either way is easy.

It’s no different than the spin that was put on building the Xcel Energy Center, Target Field or the new Vikings stadium.

The pro-stadium folks point to the benefits of the venues, and the fact they either attract a team or keep one in town, and the anti-stadium groups rail on the amount of public money that is invested in building a playground for billionaire owners and millionaire athletes.

But what can’t be argued is this: Hosting events such as the Super Bowl, or this summer’s All-Star Game, are what make a city, and state, big league in the public eye.

Patrick Reusse, my colleague at 1500 ESPN and a longtime Star Tribune sports columnist, did a blog for the paper in 2013 that attempted to trace the use of the phrase, “a cold Omaha.”

Reusse wrote that Hubert Humphrey was credited with having said the Twin Cities would become “a cold Omaha” without the presence of major league sports. This dated to 1976, as the back-and-forth was picking up about the Vikings and Twins needing a new home to replace Metropolitan Stadium.

That new stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, would open in 1982 and host numerous big events, including the 1992 Super Bowl, before meeting its demise this year.

As a Vikings fan, I’m delighted that the team’s new facility will be front-and-centre during the 2018 Super Bowl media blitz (although the non-football-fans among the taxpayers of Minnesota may be less than happy with how some of their tax dollars have been used to build a sports complex for billionaires to be used by millionaires). The optimists in Minneapolis may hope that 2018 will be the first time ever that the Super Bowl champions can be crowned in their own stadium, but that’s unlikely (not impossible, but it hasn’t happened yet).

Update: Speaking of optimists, here’s The Daily Norseman‘s Ted Glover, right on schedule.

After 40 plus years of pessimism and waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s time to get positive about this team, the new coaching staff, the new stadium, Teddy Bridgewater, and hosting a Super Bowl. Why?

The stadium was dead in the water. Better luck next time, Minnesota. Maybe next year. Then not only wasn’t it dead, it passed in record time for a bill moving through the legislature.

The Vikings blew their chance to get a potential franchise quarterback in the draft, after they had an opportunity to get one early on. Better luck next time, Minnesota, maybe next year. Then Teddy Bridgewater fell in to their laps.

New Orleans was going to get that Super Bowl bid. Better luck next time, Minnesota. Maybe next year. Then they won. And oh yeah…FUCK THOSE GUYS.

Franchise changing moment, turning the corner, things looking up — use whatever phrase you want. I am of the belief that the events of the last couple of seasons (new stadium, new coach, last few drafts) are milestones in the history of this franchise, and twenty years from now, when we look back on it, we’ll look at these events and say:

“Here. It all started right here.”

May 20, 2014

Happy 87th birthday, former Viking and Blue Bomber coach Bud Grant

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

On the official Minnesota Vikings page today, an infographic to celebrate former coach Bud Grant’s 87th birthday:

Click to see full infographic

Click to see full infographic

Update: Minnesota will host SuperBowl LII in 2018:

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