Month: November 2010

mma

How old is too old to fight?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Jordan Breen raises a question along those lines on Twitter today, linking to video of a dreadful performance by MMA/kickboxing veteran Gary Goodridge and wondering how promoters can keep trotting him out into the ring.

The fight’s horrible — opponent Catalin Morosanu seems to enjoy landing shots at will through the first round but later seems reticent to hurt the poor guy any more than he already has. You can almost hear Howard Cosell vowing to quit covering the sport.

In other recent Senior League fighting, Ken Shamrock keeps competing on ever-smaller stages, and Jake Rossen asks at ESPN how long he can go before commissions step in and say no.

In boxing, the current WBF world champion is 48-year-old Evander Holyfield, who defeated fellow 40something Frans Botha for the belt. He’ll defend it against Sherman Williams, who is apparently not a paint.

A few fighters can be productive after 40. Randy Couture has been a viable MMA fighter, most recently proving that James Toney is not. George Foreman cleanly knocked out Michael Moorer in his mid-40s to become a champion again. Yet both benefited from periods of inactivity — Couture still has fewer than 30 fights on his record, and Foreman was out of the sport for roughly 10 years before returning. (In the Hollywood universe, Rocky Balboa had quite a few years to recover from all those Clubber and Drago neck-twisting power shots.)

Hard and fast rules clearly won’t cut it. The real danger is head trauma, and MMA fans are less likely to worry over 47-year-old Couture than they would over 40-year-old Chuck Liddell, who has been knocked out cold in two of his last three fights. Goodridge has been knocked out too many times in his career, but Shamrock’s issues are different — he’s simply being outclassed in most of his fights.

And that’s the problem. We can’t simply tell fighters to stay out of the cage or ring simply because we’re tired of watching them tap out against unknowns. All we can do is skip those fights as paying customers or journalists. It’s clear that the audience for Ken Shamrock’s fights — substantial four or five years ago — has dried up, and that may force him to quit fighting at last.

For Goodridge and others who might circle the globe looking for a country willing to rubber-stamp their pass into a ring, it’s up to their friends, family and fellow fighters. And ultimately, the man himself.

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soccer

Time to transition to a post-FIFA world? (Or World Cup, anyway?)

Posted on by Beau Dure

The FIFA World Cup bid process long ago descended into farce long ago. BBC’s long-threatened Panorama investigation, released a couple of days before the Big Bid Vote, is stark but not really surprising. We’ve all known for a while that we’re not dealing with angels here.

The program is still worth watching. Andrew Jennings makes it entertaining — too much so, at times. And you can see two amusing highlights:

  1. Doesn’t the FIFA Executive Committee room look like some sort of bunker that should be populated by James Bond supervillains?
  2. A Dutch lawmaker’s accent turns “situation” into “shituation.”

I found Part 2, embedded below, slightly more interesting because it goes beyond the predictable funneling of money and into more worrying questions for nations that are bidding on the Cup. FIFA’s list of requirements is more demanding than Mariah Carey’s backstage rider and less amusing than the Foo Fighters’ version. (Or, if you’re really into hard-core efforts to turn backstage riders into comedy gold, Iggy Pop’s.)

The Dutch, Jennings tells us, now believe they would lose money on the World Cup. Suffice it to say the conversation I had a couple of months ago on World Cup economics seems less relevant given FIFA’s desire to take a hefty share of the reward and no share of the risk.

As the BBC report drew closer to airing, much public fretting was made of whether the report would hinder England’s 2018 bid. What’s curious isn’t that the oddsmakers such as William Hill have now installed Russia has an overwhelming favorite ahead of England but that they also think so little of the USA’s bid for 2022. That link currently has the USA at 9-2 behind Qatar (1-2) and Australia (5-2). These odds haven’t changed in the wake of the FIFA report showing the English and American bids in far better shape than their competitors.

If the oddsmakers are correct, the backlash will be immense. FIFA will undoubtedly give its reasons, but who would doubt that the scandal-ridden panel of bigwigs simply opted for states that don’t have pesky traditions of journalistic scrutiny? Should future bids be limited to autocratic countries only?

We might even have to think the unthinkable: Would soccer be better off without FIFA?

The best precedent for such a move would be in chess, where Garry Kasparov led a breakaway from international body FIDE that lasted more than a decade. The title is more or less unified now, though world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen has thrown up his hands and walked away from a World Championship qualifying process that makes CONCACAF’s World Cup cycle look simple. (The re-election of president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who brazenly shut up supporters of reform-minded former world champion Anatoly Karpov, couldn’t have given Carlsen or anyone else much reassurance about FIDE’s commitment to fairness.)

Kasparov and Carlsen, though, have had legitimate claims to be the best of their eras without FIDE’s stamp of approval. That seems more difficult in soccer, particularly when any sort of sanctioned soccer ultimately goes up to the chain to the big boys in Zurich.

National federations can’t do much to challenge FIFA. They’re ultimately the local branches of the international organizer.

Perhaps a more imposing challenge could come from the giant European clubs. If Manchester United, Barcelona, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, AC Milan and company decide to take their ball and go elsewhere, players and fans might be willing to go with them. But the issues that Jennings investigates have little to do with the club game, so the incentive is lacking.

And the USA might have a lot to lose if FIFA’s sanction is devalued. U.S. Soccer and its sanctioned first division, MLS, already face the occasional lawsuit accusing them of misusing “monopoly” powers. Courts have been kind so far, but that’s not because they’re cognizant of the soccer wars of the 1930s and 1980s that destroyed pro soccer in this country.

Reform will most likely have to come from within. That hasn’t seemed plausible in recent months. But that might be because everyone is playing nicely to try to gain favor for their World Cup bids. If the oddsmakers are right, the losing bid nations will have little to lose by speaking up. And we the fans may have plenty to gain if they do.

Addendum: I made it through this whole post and forgot to give a hat tip to The Shin Guardian, which raises a couple of questions that show the uncomfortable position the USA bid is in. Like a cyclist blowing away the field in the drug scandal-ridden Tour de France, the winner of this contest will be asked whether the win was legitimate. Not sure I agree with notion of referring to “the Bradley debacle” as if everyone agrees what that might be, but clearly a lot of dreams will be dashed if the 2022 vote goes elsewhere.

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soccer

Settling all MLS dilemmas in one easy fix (maybe)

Posted on by Beau Dure

The big issues coming out of MLS Cup weekend, among the media and the hard-core supporters (most of whom are “media” in some sense, even if it’s just a prolific Twitter habit) were:

1. This game is ending far too late. Fans are leaving, and no one’s going to make deadline. And maybe they should revisit the whole neutral-site idea, anyway.

2. 10 teams in the playoffs next year? Really?

3. Hmm, the league is considering the formation of a committee that would study the idea of forming a task force to do an in-depth look into asking its competition committee to weigh the prospects of “changing to the international calendar.” (The “international” calendar, of course, means “Western Europe’s calendar.”)

4. Hey, cool, I didn’t know your book was out! Can I get it on Kindle?

Simple issues first: I’m inquiring into issue #4, and the game simply needs to be played earlier. No MLS Cup final should kick off at 8:55 p.m. on a Sunday night. It’s too late. Possibly too cold. The ideal time, particularly if the game is on an NFL Sunday, is probably 6:30 or 7. People can flip over to MLS after the afternoon NFL games, then flip to the Sunday night game when the soccer’s done. Families can attend the game and still have a chance of getting home to get some sleep before work or school the next day.

But should MLS Cup stay in November? Here’s one suggestion surely doomed to fail:

– To meet FIFA’s insistence on playing within the “international calendar,” split the season into a fall Apertura and spring Clausura like so many Latin American leagues. (The wise man they call The Perfesser agrees.) But these won’t quite be your traditional Apertura and Clausura (in part because the calendar and the number of teams simply won’t allow it).

– The Apertura winner earns the right to host MLS Cup the following summer. MLS will still have months to plan a big event with all the attendant conventions (supporters, retailers, sponsors, club execs, etc.), which wouldn’t be possible if the playoffs went to the highest-seeded finalist as determined one week earlier. But the right to host the final will be earned on the field. The host team might even be playing in the game.

– Here’s one trick: To let everyone play a balanced schedule in the Apertura, we have to split the league into two 10-team conferences. The Apertura will be 18 weeks, from early August to late November — typically the best MLS months for attendance. (Yes, TV windows are minimal, but we’ll have to make do with Thursday night games through the Apertura and then stress the Clausura for TV.)

– So how will we know who wins the Apertura and hosts MLS Cup? That will be the first game of the Clausura, which runs 10 weeks from early March to mid-May, and features only interconference games. We’ll start with a bang by pairing the Apertura conference winners to determine the Cup host. The host city still has a couple of months to prepare.

– Records are cumulative. They don’t reset for the Clausura. After 28 games, everyone will have played each team in its conference twice and each team in the other conference once.

– The playoffs will usually run four weeks using the modified Aussie rules system I’ve already put forth. The top four seeds are the Apertura winner, the top team in each conference and the team with the next-best record. Then we have four wild cards.

(Option B has six teams: The Apertura champ and team with top overall record in a four-team modified Aussie rules playoff, with four wild cards playing off to reach that round. Option C: Go straight to four teams.)

Oh, that 10-team playoff format? Forget it. If you’re taking a winter break and summer break, you don’t have time to play all those games.

In fact, in World Cup years, you don’t have time for playoffs at all. Go straight to MLS Cup.

So in simple terms, without all the argumentation: It’s a 28-game season with an 18-game Apertura played all within the conferences. The conference winners face off in the first game of the Clausura for the right to host MLS Cup, and then you have playoffs as described above.

Nothing’s perfect. The Clausura start and Apertura championship game take place during college hoops conference championship week, and it won’t help to move it 1-2 weeks in either direction. CONCACAF Champions League teams play 24 games in the 18 weeks of the Apertura. (The good news: If they get to the knockout rounds, the schedule is a little easier during the skimpier Clausura.)

But this maximizes many things the league would like to accomplish:

  1. Balanced schedule, more or less.
  2. Many teams involved in playoff chase.
  3. Time to plan MLS Cup and attendant conventions.
  4. Incentive to win right to host MLS Cup.
  5. Playoff system that spreads out a lot of home games.
  6. Winter break to avoid freezing.
  7. Ballyhooed “international calendar.”

Have at it.

For further reading: Brian Straus’ group-stage playoff suggestion and Paul Kennedy’s argument in favor of a fall-to-spring season, complete with the suggestion to phase it in during the 2014 World Cup year.

3
olympic sports, winter sports

Biathlon team surprises

Posted on by Beau Dure

Last year, biathlete Haley Johnson got a few World Cup points. This year, she isn’t going to the World Cup or IBU Cup.

In February, Wynn Roberts got a start in the Olympics. This winter? No slot on the team.

Such is the harsh, unforgiving world of sports that don’t attract mountains of money. Most of the spots on the team were determined by trials.

Jay Hakkinen, who has had a long career with a few top 10s along the way, is taking the early part of the season off.

0
soccer

Is MLS too physical?

Posted on by Beau Dure

This is a story I worked on through much of the MLS season, but the timing to run it was never quite right. I just updated a couple of figures and posted it here instead.

Early in the MLS season, a couple of league coaches were tired of hearing that their teams were playing a bit rough.

“If you want to avoid contact, I would suggest badminton or curling or chess maybe,” Philadelphia coach Peter Nowak told the Delaware County Daily Times.

“If you want me to bring a lot of ballerinas I will,” then-Toronto coach Preki told TSN.

But players and coaches can’t agree on whether MLS is a “physical” league. One reason for the lack of consensus: They’re not really sure what “physical” means or how “physical” play affects the game.

Continue reading →

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soccer

The big MLS playoff and schedule announcement

Posted on by Beau Dure

As you may have already heard, MLS announced two things Sunday night to coincide with MLS Cup:

1. They’re looking into a change in scheduling to align with the international calendar, which in many parts of the world means an August-May league calendar — with or without a split season, with or without a winter break (well, with — Garber concedes the league won’t be playing in January or most of February). What has actually been decided along these lines: Absolutely nothing. Could be split season, could be Bundesliga-style, could be nothing.

2. They want to go to 11 teams in the playoff. I’m sorry — 10. Thinking ahead to Nigel Tufnel Day (11/11/11). Bracket system to be determined. Brian Straus and I can still hold out hope for our competing playoff proposals (he wants group stage; I want Aussie Rules style).

MLS has often held an informal talk with a mob surrounding the commissioner at halftime. This time, they decided to let us focus on the game, so they told us and held a press conference ahead of the game, with the request that we hold off on reporting it. Sounds reasonable, right? They could’ve just handed us a press release, and we wouldn’t have had a chance to ask questions.

Not that we the media ask the most brilliant questions, and not that Don Garber was really in a position to say anything more than that.

As Charles Boehm said on Twitter (I’ll go back and add links later), aligning with dates for international games would make sense. Playing any farther into the winter is a non-starter.

A Latin American-style split season could be intriguing, and a summer MLS Cup wouldn’t have to worry about NFL and NCAA football taking every available weekend time slot.

The playoff announcement will meet with sure derision from the fans. But good luck changing their minds.

And really, as I said multiple times in my book, MLS can’t please everyone. Not in such a diverse country.

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mma

‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ Season 12, Episode 10: Kos keeps talking

Posted on by Beau Dure

Should we really root for Michael Johnson over Alex Caceres? No doubt Caceres has had his annoying moments, but after seeing Johnson flip out over a pretty harmless kitchen-sink prank and falsely blame Caceres, the sympathy meter might flip toward Bruce Leeroy a bit.

Kyle Watson, probably the most polished of the four quarterfinalists we’ll see in action tonight, trains with GSP, who must have spent most of the morning squeezing into an Under Armour top. Or maybe it’s just paint.

Watson will be up against Team Koscheck’s Aaron “English” Wilkinson, who has shown a lot of heart and surprising skill in getting this far. The American vet attempts some trash talk having to do with fish and chips. What are you saying about ordering fish and chips, Kyle? You come say that to my face. I outweigh you by quite a bit. Probably because … I eat a lot of fish and chips.

Fight starts early in the episode, with Steve Mazzagatti reffing. Watson quickly gets Wilkinson down, where Watson should have a decided advantage. Wilkinson does well to tie him up and work for the escape. Watson isn’t doing much, and Koscheck justifiably yells for Mazzagatti to stand them up. Wilkinson gets to his feet on his own, but only for a moment. Watson takes his back and sinks in a secure body triangle with two minutes left to work for the rear naked choke. It only takes a minute.

“How many rear naked chokes have my team …,” says a disgruntled Koscheck, who now has just one fighter, Nam Phan, left in the competition.

Continue reading →

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mma

‘The Ultimate Fighter,” Season 12, Episode 9: 1-1

Posted on by Beau Dure

After a brief glimpse at the house in which Sevak asks fellow Armenian Sako (“Psycho”) to avenge his loss to Jonathan Brookins, we go to the gym, where Georges St. Pierre tells his team they’re scaling back training. No hard-core sparring. No exhaustion. He wants to work on their tactics and keep them fresh and hungry for their fights. Like most of GSP’s training ideas, it makes perfect sense, especially when the typical Ultimate Fighter contestant gasses in the first round in the midst of such an intense schedule.

Koscheck trains Psycho to avoid giving up his back and getting caught in a rear naked choke. Easier said than done — the choke is usually the end result of being beaten up.

Back at the house — specifically in the yard — Brookins chats with Nam Phan, crossing team lines to talk about how humble they are compared to all the cocky dudes in the house at the pool table.

We go quickly to the fight after the first commercial break. Herb Dean is our ref. They touch gloves, and we’re off.

Continue reading →

0
soccer

A modest MLS playoff proposal

Posted on by Beau Dure

Complaints about the MLS playoff format are as much a part of the American soccer landscape as chants about pies are a part of the English scene. Beneath the hysteria over New York or Salt Lake winning a geographically imprecise conference title, some of the complaints are legit:

– Hosting the second leg of a two-leg series is a middling advantage after a long season.

– Colorado finished seventh in the league and yet will host a conference final.

The league likes to give everyone a home game and put an emphasis on elimination games rather than extended series. Great, but another method works just as well. That method is borrowed from football.

Not that football. The Aussie kind.

Australian Rules Football uses an eight-team version of the Page playoff system that is popular in a few offbeat sports such as softball, curling and yachting.

The principles are these:

– The top four teams must be beaten twice to be eliminated. The bottom four only get one loss.

– The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds are guaranteed two home games. No. 3 through No. 6 get at least one.

So if MLS had put this system in place this year, the schedule would’ve been as follows (home teams listed first):

First round

– No. 1 Los Angeles vs. No. 4 Dallas
– No. 2 Salt Lake vs. No. 3 New York
– No. 5 Columbus vs. No. 8 San Jose (loser out)
– No. 6 Seattle vs. No. 7 Columbus (loser out)

Second round (both losers out)

– LA-Dallas loser vs. Columbus-SJ winner
– RSL-NY loser vs. Seattle-Clb winner

Semifinals (both losers out)

– RSL-NY winner vs. first 2nd round winner
– LA-Dallas winner vs. second 2nd round winner

MLS Cup: Semifinal winners at highest remaining seed

The system is relatively simple, and it rewards regular-season play. The top teams get an advantage without being idle so long that they might get cold. What else could you want?

(MLS fans will surely think of something, of course!)

5
medal projections, olympic sports, track and field

2012 medal projections: Old Cold War battles, Jamaica heat up women’s running

Posted on by Beau Dure

Olympic athletes don’t just show up out of nowhere in an Olympic year, except maybe in a few secretive nations. Next year, we’ll have world championships in virtually everything, giving us a good chance to project what might happen in 2012.

We’re not waiting until then. We’re setting up some projections now, then revising as new results come in. It’s FiveThirtyEight with less math and no Rasmussen.

Today, it’s …

ATHLETICS: Women’s running events

We’re not Eurosnobs. Really. But isn’t “athletics” less awkward than “track and field”?

Besides, the marathon uses neither a track (except at the very end) or a field. And the shot put can be held anywhere.

The year’s top performances for each athlete are given in parentheses, but remember that some top athletes (Usain Bolt springs to mind) didn’t put much emphasis on running in a year with no Olympics or World Championships. (Source: IAAF)

We’re going to split this into running events and non-running events, then split it further by gender. We have a lot of ground to cover.

Continue reading →

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