Month: March 2017

youth soccer

Youth soccer survey: Happy with your area's leagues?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Parents, coaches, technical directors, administrators, whoever … please let me know what you think. I’ll likely do a story on the results.

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2
ranting soccer dad, soccer

Youth soccer survey: Happy with your area’s leagues?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Parents, coaches, technical directors, administrators, whoever … please let me know what you think. I’ll likely do a story on the results.

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2
soccer

Is MLS liable for a player’s foul temper and concussion treatment?

Posted on by Beau Dure

A lawsuit filed by former D.C. United goalkeeper Charlie Horton raises a few interesting questions … and some that seem a little less interesting. (Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer.)

Like many legal documents, this suit has a few aspects that will make anyone with the slightest knowledge of the sport laugh out loud. I’ll never understand why lawyers think they can get away with such nonsense, but they’re not alone in the “post-fact” landscape. Horton’s four caps with the U23s (sharing time with Cody Cropper, Ethan Horvath and Zack Steffen) are distorted into “a starting goalkeeper for the national team.” That may be technically true. The assertion that Horton played in Olympic qualifying games is not. He was on the roster, but Steffen and Horvath played all five games (four wins, one very costly loss).

The allegation is as follows: After United’s players watched video of their recent match against Dallas, Espindola confronted Horton about a practice-field incident “weeks prior.” Horton said he wasn’t interested in talking about it, but then …

(Again, this is the plaintiff’s side of the case — we’ll see how the various defendants dispute what happened.) Espindola is the sole defendant in the first three counts of the complaint: assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The next day, coach Ben Olsen met with Horton. Here’s how the plaintiffs sum it up:

The notion that a coach, a team and a league may be negligent (Count IV of the complaint is “negligent supervision,” directed at Olsen and United) for hiring a player with “fire in his belly” won’t win Horton and his legal team many sympathizers in the soccer community. And skeptics will question how Horton was able to play for the Richmond Kickers (8 games, 16 saves, 0.88 GAA — good enough to get called back up to United for part of the summer) and return to preseason camp with United, only to announce his retirement after Olsen told him he wouldn’t make the team in 2017.

But here are the interesting aspects:

1. Is MLS, under the single-entity structure, liable for all the actions of all its teams? 

Count V (Negligent Hiring and Retention) is directed at MLS, with this paragraph included:

2. Did D.C. United follow proper concussion procedures?

Curiously, no one on United’s training staff — which surely would’ve been responsible for any decision on whether Horton trained that day — is listed as a defendant. It’s Espindola, Olsen, United and MLS.

The complaint goes on to say Horton’s condition worsened overnight. He then reported the problem to trainer Brian Goodstein, who referred to an unnamed doctor and put him in the Concussion Protocol.

Count VI of the complaint is “Respondeat Superior/Vicarious Liability,” which would surely require a lawyer to untangle.

The complaint doesn’t specify an amount of damages sought. See the full version at Courthouse News.

The law firm is Ashcraft & Gerel, which advertises frequently on D.C.-area television.

For sake of comparison: When Bryan Namoff sought $12 million for his career-ending concussion, he sued Goodstein, then-coach Tom Soehn, D.C. United, then-team physician Christopher Annunziata and Commonwealth Orthopedics. He also had a malpractice suit against United, Goodstein and Commonwealth, plus a separate malpractice suit against Annunziata. In skimming through the docket reports, it seems these cases dragged on forever, with a couple dozen doctors and a few outliers (Langley School? Arlington Soccer Association) also served with subpoenas.

(Disclaimer: I’ve been treated at Commonwealth, as have a couple of relatives. My hand is much better now, thanks.)

As Steven Goff reported, that case did not end well for Namoff.

D.C. Superior Court documents show the sides did not settle. The case, which sought $20 million in total damages, was dismissed.

A judge ruled workers’ compensation laws barred Namoff’s claim against United, Soehn and Goodstein.

Namoff’s claim against Annunziata and Commonwealth Orthopaedics was withdrawn after the defense provided a detailed list of evidence that Namoff was not as sick as he stated.

In an interview Tuesday, attorneys for Annunziata and the medical group said no payment was ever offered or made.

Why wasn’t MLS sued as well? Perhaps it’s simply the different nature of the injury. Horton claims Espindola inflicted his injury, and MLS is negligent for employing him. Namoff wasn’t claiming an assault; he was claiming negligent medical care.

So in addition to the ongoing concern about concussions in sports, the Horton case could be one to watch for those interested in understanding the league’s complex single-entity structure.

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olympic sports, soccer

USA Hockey vs. U.S. Soccer: Quick comparison

Posted on by Beau Dure

With the U.S. women’s hockey team (and possibly the men’s team as well) on the verge of striking through the World Championships, this seems like a good time to compare USA Hockey to U.S. Soccer.

Which … isn’t easy. You can compare each organization’s Form 990s, as I’ve done in the chart below, but one line item might not equal another line item. I get a headache just thinking about lawyers arguing the definition of “program service revenue” and so forth.

One key difference: When U.S. Soccer lists its highest-paid employees, you’ll find coaches and players. Not at USA Hockey.

Viewed historically, that makes sense. Before MLS, U.S. Soccer paid its men’s players to be part of the national team. Today, they get substantial World Cup bonuses that can easily put their names in the 990 forms. USA Hockey’s men get paid well in the NHL, and there has been no need to pay them more. The women’s team is arguing now that its players need professional salaries, and they’re not going to get them from pro club play just yet.

So the next question is obvious: Can USA Hockey afford it? Again, I’m not enough of an accountant to say no, but the budget outlined here suggests they’d need some more revenue.

Which raises the next question: Can USA Hockey attract sponsors to pay the players? USA Track and Field, included for sake of another comparison, has plenty of sponsorship money.

And one totally unrelated question: Is USA Hockey spending an absurd amount of money on website hosting? They list one registration contractor (Neural Planet, $212,198), one web host (TST Media/NGIN, $158,440) and one “programming, support and hosting” contractor (The Active Network, $180,250). I didn’t see similar listings for USSF and USA Track and Field, but could they be spending just as much money on in-house employees doing roughly the same thing?

[gview file=”http://www.sportsmyriad.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fed-form-990s-Share.pdf”%5D

If you prefer to see it as a Google Sheet, click here.

Sources (transcribed, not scraped, so any transcription errors are mine):

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sports culture

The NFL vs. Colin Kaepernick: Whose bubble will burst first?

Posted on by Beau Dure

About 12 years ago, I was in a newsroom watching the NFL with an editor who had little use for progressive talk and considered many of his fellow journalists politically correct weasels. But he was more Libertarian than “conservative,” and he could see a bit of nuance.

nfl flag photo
Photo by rexhammock

As we watched the typical NFL anthem presentation, with a massive flag covering the field and military jets screaming across the sky, he said, “You know, if we saw something like that in Iraq, we’d be horrified.”

But the NFL is anything but horrified, even after being forced to return a fraction of the money the league and its clubs had received from the U.S. government for heartfelt but also wallet-felt military tributes.

So in this landscape, what do we make of Colin Kaepernick’s inability to find an NFL team, which at this point certainly has much more to do with his decision to take a knee during the national anthem and less to do with his skills? (Granted, if Kaepernick was at the same level as Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, an NFL team would probably cross the invisible picket line and sign him, but Kaepernick is still a better QB than a lot of the people snapping up free-agent contracts so far this offseason.)

What we really have here is a collision of political bubbles. Plenty of people simply don’t want to discuss the possibility that this sort of protest, fairly or unfairly, does more harm than good. It’s difficult to quantify such things, and it’s not fair to blame the 2016 election results solely at Kaepernick’s feet. But some people didn’t even want to discuss the possibility that such protests fired up voters who wouldn’t ordinarily bother to vote to get to the ballot box — or perhaps deflated the political enthusiasm of people who would ordinarily be sympathetic to Kaepernick’s cause. To even ask the question invites accusations of “white privilege” or worse. That’s life in a bubble.

But the NFL owners who are keeping Kaepernick out of work may soon find that they’re in a bubble of their own.

The Kaepernick response isn’t the first divisive move the NFL has made in recent years. They’re under legitimate fire for their slow response to the concussion issue. They’re not the most labor-friendly league — while NBA players and baseball players roll around in luxury, a lot of NFL players toil for salaries well below those in other sports. There’s no minor league, so players hoping to catch on with NFL teams when injuries deplete the rosters must keep themselves in shape on their own dime.

And yes, they revel in military propaganda that is ripe for satire. See Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk — if the experimental camera work is too much for you, just read the book.

In today’s fragmented media landscape, the NFL has been the one property that has managed to maintain its hold on the viewing audience. A “hit” TV show today would’ve been a massive flop 20 years ago, most sports are oversaturated and split the audience into tiny segments, but Sundays still belong to the NFL.

But that can change. Ratings were already substantially down last season.

NFL owners simply can’t afford to alienate anyone. To be fair, that means they’re going to be a little uncomfortable if a player takes a knee during the national anthem, riling fans and sponsors. But they have a spin machine that should be able to highlight the positives, including Kaepernick’s charitable donations that have continued despite his uncertain future.

And when Donald Trump crows that the power of his Twitter pulpit is one factor in Kaepernick’s unemployment, the NFL needs to wake up and recognize how this looks. Are owners in the NFL, a sport that celebrates standing up in the face of injury and adversity, really going to give in to the whims of a bully?

What does it say about the NFL when an ostracized quarterback is clearly more courageous than any owner in the league? Whether you agree with Colin Kaepernick’s protest or not, you have to concede that he is willing to risk threats and the loss of his livelihood to make a point. And NFL owners are afraid of a guy on Twitter?

This isn’t presidential politics. The NFL can’t win by playing to a rabid “base” with just enough support to carry the swing states. Its success is based on being the one thing that everyone watches, at least one Sunday a year and usually more.

If the owners don’t realize that, their bubble will surely burst. And we’ll all see the irony of a league that celebrates bravery being forced to pay for its cowardice.

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olympic sports, soccer

News for soccer and Oly fans (including NWSL) trying to cut the cord

Posted on by Beau Dure

Earlier this month, the A+E networks — including new NWSL home Lifetime — joined the beta test for Hulu’s live TV service.

The big news today is the addition of NBC cable networks, though not NBC itself. The stories don’t specifically mention NBC Sports Network, because a lot of people who write about TV don’t watch sports, which I’ve always found odd. (Seriously — several of the stories make a big deal about Comedy Central, which most of us are watching on YouTube these days, and they don’t go into detail about actual live programming that we might want to watch as it’s happening. Even Awful Announcing talks about missing out on NBC and Comedy Central without mentioning NBC Sports Network, haven for diverse sports such as the Premier League, NASCAR and bidding on cars.)

YouTube already has a few sports networks for its planned launch.

The most comprehensive chart comparing the existing streaming services (Sling, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now) is at CNET. Then check Business Insider for some good details focusing on sports and adding Hulu and YouTube.

For the handful of networks that appeal most to soccer and Olympic sports fans, I’ve taken a table-maker for a test drive here:

[attc id=4]

 

1
basketball

Number Crunching And Ascertaining Tournament: Breaking down the bracket

Posted on by Beau Dure

I’ve been trying to learn data science, and inspired by a contest at Kaggle that is waaaay beyond my level of understanding, I’m doing some number-crunching to do a bracket.

Here’s what I did — you can see the full data set at the end.

First: In Google Sheets, I imported several data sets from ESPN, starting with their basic rankings pages listing BPI (their own numbers), strength of schedule (their computation), “strength of record” (which I don’t fully understand) and the official NCAA RPI. I also imported the seven-day ranking change and each team’s seeds.

All that importing put a strain on Google Sheets (only 25 teams per page, and I went through eight pages to get 200 teams’ data, plus a couple more), so I eventually just copied the values within Google Sheets and canceled the importing.

Then I took those numbers and computed the following:

  1. A simple average of each teams BPI, RPI and strength of record, giving me an average of computer rankings.
  2. A rough difference between each team’s computer ranking and seed. Sort of. Generally, the higher the number, the worse the team is for its seed. Only Villanova (1.0 in computer rankings, and I multiplied the seed number because there are multiple #1 seeds) and SMU (14.7 computer rankings, #6 seed) came out with negative numbers (which, in this case, means “good”).
  3. I saved the 7-day change in BPI for a future calculation.

This much was quite easy and didn’t take much time.

Second: This took quite a bit more time. If I knew how to do R programming with all the datasets in Kaggle, maybe it would’ve been easier.

I wanted to see each team’s quality wins. I’ll spare the details, but we’ll say I did a lot of checking of each team’s schedule to come up with what I’m pretty sure are each team’s six best wins, ranking “best” in order of their computer ranking average.

Some teams, all from major conferences, had a few more quality wins that I listed to the side but did not factor into the equation. Some teams didn’t even beat six teams in top 200, so I added a dummy “xx” team with a figure of 250.

Then the easy part: I took the average of their six best wins.

You can see here that this is why people are high on Duke, even though those of us who suffered through each injury and each Grayson Allen meltdown think they’ve already overachieved by winning the ACC Tournament. Duke has more quality wins than I can possibly list.

I figure this computation helps me emphasize what a team is capable of doing. Yeah, maybe they lost to the 220th-ranked team, but they also beat three in the top 20, so they have the capacity to make a run. The losses are already figured into the computer ranking.

I moved the spreadsheet into Excel at this point to try to make a cool chart. I wasn’t able to make said cool chart. But this gives you an idea of the top 20 teams’ computer ranking and quality win index. (Again, lower is better.)

Third: The Dure Power Index takes the computer average, the quality wins and the seven-day change and puts them in a super-secret formula to spit out … this.

So now that I’ve done all that, I’m going to fill out a bracket using this info. But I still have to do some hunches here and there, mostly to give mid-major schools that haven’t had many opportunities for quality wins a chance to pull some upsets. If I see a 12 seed that looks a little underrated and a 5 seed that looks a little overrated, I’ll go with that.

And no, I’m not picking Duke.

The raw-ish data (I’ve spared you a couple of sheets) is online.

 

 

2
olympic sports

Curling crowd getting too loud

Posted on by Beau Dure

The easy joke here would be that having more crowd noise would be infinitely preferable to hearing “HARRRRRRRDDDD!!!!” all the time. (Seriously — broadcasters should consider putting a decibel limit on their on-ice microphones, or just mute them when they’re not talking strategy. Some of us are listening on headphones to avoid irritating the rest of the house, and we’d rather not go deaf.)

But I had started to wonder if the crowd was getting a little out of hand. The Brier (Canada’s men’s championship) is in Newfoundland/Labrador this year — specifically, the beautiful town of St. John’s — and they’re quite excited to see hometown hero Brad Gushue, the 2006 Olympic champion. Gushue is first in the worldwide Order of Merit rankings. (See spreadsheet below.) The next person from the province is 345th.

During last night’s showdown with defending champion Kevin Koe, the crowd wasn’t just cheering the great shots from Gushue and his team. A roar went up when Koe’s team had a rare miss.

(This was a spectacular game, well worth going back and checking out the replay on ESPN3 or seeing it when Curling Canada posts it. If you don’t have three hours to spare, just skip ahead to the 11th end. Yes, 11th. Overtime, basically. And if you don’t understand curling, watch the following …)

So I wondered if it was just me. Nope. Here’s Glenn Howard, for whom “veteran” is an understatement (four world championships and this ridiculous shot): “I’ve never actually seen a crowd cheering as loudly for misses, and I’ve been to 17 of these. This is the loudest I’ve ever seen in my career, for an opposition missing. I’ve never actually witnessed that before so this is new to me.”

Source: Is the Brier crowd getting out of hand? – CBC Sports – Curling

The last round of round-robin play is this morning. This afternoon, they’ll play any necessary tiebreakers to determine the four playoff teams. Then it’s the great Page playoffs:

  • 1 vs. 2: Winner to final, loser to semifinal
  • 3 vs. 4: Winner to semifinal, loser out
  • Semifinal: 1-2 loser vs. 3-4 winner – winner to final, loser out
  • Final: The two remaining teams

Here’s the situation:

Newfoundland/Labrador (Brad Gushue) is guaranteed a spot in the 1-2 matchup. They’re playing Nova Scotia (Jamie Murphy), which can’t advance.

Manitoba (Mike McEwen) will make the 1-2 matchup if they beat Quebec (Jean-Michel Menard). Quebec is playing for their playoff lives — a win would at least get them in a tiebreaker, a loss means they’re out unless Canada (Kevin Koe) also loses.

Canada (Koe), so named because they’re the defending champions and didn’t have to play in the provincial tournament to get here, is playing New Brunswick (Mike Kennedy) and can reach the 1-2 matchup with a win and some help.

Northern Ontario (Brad Jacobs) has finished round-robin play and will at least make the tiebreaker. If Canada or Quebec loses this morning, they’re in the playoff.

British Columbia (John Morris) is also idle and needs Canada AND Quebec to lose to force a three-team tiebreaker.

Northwest Territories (Jamie Koe, Kevin’s brother) and Ontario (Glenn Howard, see above) are playing each other and cannot advance.

Already done: Saskatchewan (Adam Casey), Alberta (Brendan Bottcher).

It all makes more sense if you see the standings. In short:

  • Newf/Lab: 8-2
  • Manitoba: 8-2
  • N. Ontario: 8-3 (done)
  • Canada: 7-3
  • Quebec: 7-3
  • Br. Columbia: 7-4

Meet all the Brier participants, along with the top Canadians who did qualify, below. They’re ranked by Order of Merit standings, which can be a little deceiving because some curlers have other priorities besides chasing points. OOM is computed over multiple years; “YTD” is year-to-date.

 

0
women's soccer

What happened to the Washington Spirit?

Posted on by Beau Dure

I spent several weeks reporting this piece tracing the club’s trajectory from “30 seconds from the title” to “who’s starting for this club?” and “what happened to the youth clubs?”

I did not pick the word “downfall” in the headline, which immediately made me think of Meme Hitler screaming about the Krieger trade.

Source: So close, and yet so far: the curious downfall of the Washington Spirit | Football | The Guardian

0
women's soccer, work portfolio

U.S. women’s soccer: Always look on the bright side of life

Posted on by Beau Dure

Sure, they lost 3-0. But they learned a lot, and the crowds keep coming out to see them even when they’re not seeing a bunch of celebrities crushing some hapless, unfunded national team just happy to be staying in a nice hotel.

Go ahead and rip me on Twitter. I won’t be responding. At least until Easter, when all bets are off.

My analysis, quotes and words of comfort from what’s probably my last appearance in the RFK pressbox …

Source: USA women suffer worst defeat in a decade as France win SheBelieves Cup | Football | The Guardian

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