🏃‍♂️ Sports - Sad State of US Sports

[OysterOmelet]

@projectmaximus

1. Totally disagree

LOL. The soccer coach for my alma mater sits on her bum the whole game. And we reached the NCAA championship.

2. Analytics is all about breaking out actions into small and consistent units. No reason this can’t be done with football as well.

OK tell me where a soccer play starts and ends. I’ll wait.

3. Right, same with basketball (I get that it’s easier to digest), hockey and American football (probably most similar to football in terms of complexity and breaking down the actions of the most people away from the ball). Thank goodness advanced analytics isn’t performed in real time!

Yes it is. We have motion-capture data.

In football we have cameras that follow all 22 players.

Someone at my alma mater published a paper where he took coach grades on all 11 players on each play and found what their impact on expected points was. You can’t do that with soccer because you don’t have plays.

4. You can easily look at actions that create advantageous circumstances. Shots on goal->shots->completed passes->time of possession->winning possession…and so forth. You’re welcome.

(I’m actually much more of an American football fan)

Piece of cake! Do you have a paper where they do that?

I guess you can calculate the average number of points scored when you have the ball in a certain part of the field. It’s nothing like football where you have the yards from the endzone.

At joint statistical meetings, the only soccer analytics I saw were referee analytics, game-level analytics, and measuring how long players last on the field.

[hannes]

@OysterOmelet

• It’s random. No strategy.
• It’s one continuous stream. Can’t build up a large sample size. Makes analytics close to impossible.
• Everybody moves at the same time. See #2.
• Nobody ever scores. How do you know what correlates with scoring when nobody ever scores? See #2.

You seem to make these points to explain why football is boring.

To me these are points that explain why people love football. Well except for the last point.

Saying it’s random and there is no strategy might be true for low-level local clubs, but if you talk about professional football, for example the Premier League in England, with so much money on the line, how could there be no strategy? Some of the coaches, like Guardiola and Klopp are quite known for their strategies. Of course you don’t have those set plays you have in the NFL, which is cool too.

“Continuos stream” to me is better than that static play in baseball, all the time-outs in basketball, all the breaks in the NFL (2-minute warning wtf, and then games are sometimes over with a minute or more to play).

“Everybody moves at the same time” to me is better than everyone standing around all the time in baseball.

“Nobody ever scores” and of course the dreaded draws are certainly less appealing, as well as the dreaded offside rules, and now increasingly the disruption of play by video checks.

American sports are made for TV and commercial interests, it’s just highly commercialized and optimized for making profit. Football in Europe is heading that way but fans are fiercely opposing the American model.

Americans seem to like statistics way too much for my taste. It’s all about numbers. Why not just enjoy the flow of the game instead of comparing numbers?

Also, I find American fans really meh, all I ever hear during NBA games for example is “Defense, Defense” “Let’s go, xxx!”. No imagination. No fan clubs singing their hearts out, no passion. A lot of bear drinking, hot-dog munching and discussing numbers.

[hansioux]

@OysterOmelet

OK tell me where a soccer play starts and ends. I’ll wait.

Most of soccer’s sabermetrics are directly borrowed from basketball. It would measure things like expected goals conceded per defending opportunity, and expected goals per minute in possession.

I think possession is fairly easy to define, but defending opportunity perhaps might be a bit more murky.

Soccer sabermetrics would measure things like shot frequency,

[Baxter]

@TaipAmy

Sad state of US sports.
Only thing worth watching is the NFL.

New York Post : Analytics, universal DH are dragging down baseball.

Analytics, universal DH are dragging down baseball

The problem is not Analytics, it’s bad analytics. The field is full of people with no common sense, who will tell you to sprinkle a house on fire with kerosene because “the model said so.”

[projectmaximus]

Oh so you were serious!

@OysterOmelet

The soccer coach for my alma mater sits on her bum the whole game. And we reached the NCAA championship.

This isn’t your statement at all? This is simply an attempt to point out that strategy doesn’t always dictate who wins. (I say attempt because there’s a reasonable chance that the coach incorporates plenty of strategy during the hours and days when you aren’t staring at her) There are thousands of examples of superior athleticism trumping superior strategy on the sports field.

@OysterOmelet

OK tell me where a soccer play starts and ends. I’ll wait.

When does a basketball play start and end? It’s probably the same answer as soccer.

@OysterOmelet

In football we have cameras that follow all 22 players.

You’re either mistaken or you’re being intentionally misleading. The All-22 is aerial footage that shows all 22 NFL players. It’s not 22 (or even 5) cameras tracking each player. The exact same thing is available in soccer.

@OysterOmelet

Piece of cake! Do you have a paper where they do that?

I’ll do a quick google search of this (like I said I literally have never even thought about soccer analytics before this evening), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the soccer analytics industry is already larger than the NFL’s. You can criticize analytics in general and whether it’s worth the resources given to it, but suggesting it doesn’t make sense for soccer simply doesn’t make sense. As has been pointed out already, it’s likely a lack of understanding of the sport on your part.

[projectmaximus]

@hannes

Of course you don’t have those set plays you have in the NFL, which is cool too.

At least there are occasional set pieces… like basketball.

@hansioux

Most of soccer’s sabermetrics are directly borrowed from basketball.

This is what I was thinking…at first blush it seems like it would most align with basketball (and hockey). I think defensive metrics would be a bit more drawn out and numerous, but they would probably be just as clearly defined. I mean…what they measure in the NFL is quite clearly defined even when there are many variables related to intent. It’s one of the drawbacks of the current state of NFL analytics, but doesn’t make it any less “measurable”

[hansioux]

@projectmaximus

what they measure in the NFL is quite clearly defined even when there are many variables related to intent. It’s one of the drawbacks of the current state of NFL analytics, but doesn’t make it any less “measurable”

What makes the NFL easier to analyze is that it’s got clear breaks between plays.

[OysterOmelet]

@projectmaximus

When does a basketball play start and end? It’s probably the same answer as soccer.

There aren’t any. But basketball there are constant possession changes and lots of scoring which mollifies the problem.

[zender]

At the top level of any sport the skills are just mind blowing, and I think you need to play a sport a little to really appreciate how amazing the pros are. That last guy on the bench is awesome, but he’s got even better players ahead of him, and the stars are WAY better than him.
One thing I like about baseball is the parity (despite different payrolls). The last 8 years, we’ve seen 8 different champions. I like that.
One thing I LOVE about the NBA is that the are so many lead changes, and so many games are decided in the last two minutes if not the last 30 seconds. That keeps a fan in the game.
“We could still win this!”
I love World Cup Soccer, so I get excited every 4 years, but how much parity is there in the Premier League or La Liga? Two teams (Real Madrid and Barcelona) win La Liga 85% of the time. Maybe some people enjoy watching a multi-billionaire’s collection of all-stars trounce Eibar, but not me. With some sort of salary cap, you could have more competitive balance.
And when was the last time you saw 10 lead changes in a footie match?

[tempogain]

@Poundsand

and obviously nobody was happy with the .083 he had to start (

Lol. Doesn’t sound like you need the advanced stats for that one.

[hannes]

@zender

Premier League

PL with five potential title contenders a bit better than La Liga (Barcelona, Real), Germany (Bayern), and France (PSG).

It is what it is. Do fans want more parity, though? Or do they want those super-teams?

[BigDave]

Only two can win the PL this year. who are the other three?

Financial fair play has made things even worse.

To be fair though. It was Man U or Arsenal for a fair few years, then Chelsea so things do change. Liverpool had 20 years out of the chase.

[hannes]

Why only two?

ManCity, Chelsea, Liverpool
ManUnited, Arsenal
Tottenham

These six will always have a chance, just a matter of finding the right pieces and management. It’s not that the top three are far ahead in terms of money.

[BigDave]

They are the big six, but I don’t think you will find anyone picking anyone apart from Liverpool or Man City this year.

Tottenham last won in 1961. If you include them, then you have to say three can win in Spain.

[hannes]

A bit early after one round? Lot of things can happen, injuries, primadonna behavior, and what not. But anyway, just saying that the Premier League is more unpredictable at the top than Spain, Germany, and France.

[BigDave]

I agree that it is slightly better than those places. Scotland is the most ridiculous.

Rangers have won 55 and Celtic 52, while no other club has won the title on more than four occasions. No club outside the Old Firm has won the title since the [1984–85 season]

[hannes]

In the US, it’s refreshing to see that teams like Kansas or Green Bay in the NFL or Milwaukee and San Antonio in the NBA can actually win a championship despite having minor markets and therefore low appeal for superstars.

In Europe, even with Leicester’s success in 2016, it’s almost impossible these days for small-market teams to get to the top. Also refreshing to see that the super-star teams in the US tend to implode more often than not.

[superking]

@Mr_PBH

Foggy feeling?

A happy feeling.

Fuzzy feeling is an ambiguous collocation. I realised that after I wrote it and then left it unedited as it paired with the ambiguity surrounding our shared memory of the basketball/ football conversation.

[zender]

Whether it’s 2 teams or 5 teams in the PL, it’s a very unbalanced league. That it’s more balanced that other European leagues is not an overall positive IMHO. Cheering for Man City or Barcelona is equivalent to rooting for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to make another 100 billion (unless you grew up supporting them).
MLB has had 15 different champions since 2001. And money spent on a couple of great players doth not a great team make (Angels).
The top spending three teams this year put out over 250 million dollars and are all doing well right now. The lowest paid team (#30 Orioles @ 43 million) is winning most of its games (52%).
If you’re a fan of the Yankees or Dodgers, I’m sure you like them spending big bucks and being in the running each year, but if you’re a fan of one of the average baseball teams, you still have windows of opportunity and the occasional post season run that gives your team a chance at winning it all.

[OysterOmelet]

@hansioux

Most of soccer’s sabermetrics are directly borrowed from basketball. It would measure things like expected goals conceded per defending opportunity, and expected goals per minute in possession.

I think possession is fairly easy to define, but defending opportunity perhaps might be a bit more murky.

A possession in basketball isn’t even well-defined.