pretty much all sports are boring as fuck

1, 2, or 3 things of interest every 90 minutes, is shitty entertainment

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part of why football is really popular is that they've trained us as viewers to find it interesting every time a first down is at stake, we know that a 15 yard play is really good

even though in determining the outcome of the game, its probably something on the order of putting 3 or 4 passes together in soccer

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its probably ok not to go through heroic efforts to find every sport interesting

but, one way to enjoy soccer more is to focus on which team possesses the ball more, lots of the really good chances come at the end of long chains of possession, the longer you possess it, the better your odds of it finally winding up with a good chance are

one way to imagine it, is think of what optimal basketball strategy would be if there was no shot clock, the basket was 5 feet tall, and goal tending was legal

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277811)

Also, it's telling that everything that supposedly makes soccer more interesting is something where it's easily eclipsed by other major sports.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36278618)

I sort of accept that that's largely because I don't have a great handle on the process that leads to scoring

Its difficult for me to know which midfield plays are high value midfield plays, and which ones aren't

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36278685)

How much command/control do soccer managers have?

Is it up to the players to know which tactics to employ when?

How much do coaches who have better tactical acumen than the other coach matter?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36278856)

the managers control everything and give specific instructions to each player. once the half starts though it's mostly up to the players to adapt, with occasional instructions from the sideline. they also make substitutions, which if engineered correctly can change the entire look of the team with a single change.

good managers are pretty important. a shitty team with a good manager can do a lot if they can stifle a better team and play to their strengths. a bad manager tries to force the wrong outline on the wrong players.

that being said, you throw a team like spain together and they're going to crush an inferior team most of the time just because they have 11 of the best 100 players in the world and are seasoned champions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36278966)

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seems like the more command/control the coaches/managers have the more strategically deep the game becomes

picking between broad outlines that the players adjust to over 45 minutes or whatever is important, but there's only so deep you can get when you're depending on players to notice and exploit opportunities

when the coach can notice an opportunity and exploit it with the next play call,

your game becomes much deeper strategically

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279085)

really though it has to do with a combination of culture, natural affinity, and open-mindedness. i find myself debating soccermos from south american and european countries a lot about soccer /not/ being an obviously superior sport, even though part of me agrees because i love it. and obviously i do the opposite a lot with north american bros where there's obviously an element of disdain for sissy soccer players.

baseball is something i grew up with and even my team, the blue jays, won when i was a kid and were part of the zeitgeist. i still go to games and watch and listen now and then, follow the news, watching the standings, etc. but baseball will just never really do it for me.

there are few areas in life that are more about value judgments and aesthetic preference.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279184)

I agree its largely an aesthetic preference

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additionally, I don't think a game necessarily gets more aesthetically pleasing the deeper it gets strategically

I actually think that's one of the big mental biases people who think of themselves stat nerds have

its probably totally uncorrelated, and if anything probably slightly negatively correlated

strategically perfecting games probably looks like the Devils inventing the neutral zone trap more often than the Warriors shooting tons of 3s

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279274)

no chance in hell i'm watching a random baseball or football game.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279173)

but outside WC i cant watch shit, its quite fucking odd

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277092)

There's not even enough time to really get bored since it takes half the time to play a soccer game as it does to play an NFL/MLB game, and almost no interruptions or ads.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277158)

Okay.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277254)

i have to say re soccer though that i really dislike PKs as a way to break ties and ESPECIALLY in big games

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277368)

To put it another way, would you be fine with having a tie in the World Cup final, or co-champions at the end of a PL season? Same principle.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277431)

sure, why not? better that than some arbitrary after the fact tiebreaker regarding goal differential that no one is *really* thinking about.

no different to me than two swimmers touching at the same time and getting the gold medal.

to me sports is about the competition and the play of a particular game. the actual "win" is less important to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277571)

I like watching it now. Not my go to sports to watch (football and baseball), but I enjoy watching talented teams play. That Spain Portugal game was great. The lack of scoring actually adds some tension (unless it is like 3-0 or something).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277237)

AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER

June 25, 2014

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."

Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.

(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.

(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.

Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.

(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.

(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!

(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.

(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.

(8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.

Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.

Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?

(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."

The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)

Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.

Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277270)

Date: June 20th, 2018 10:20 AM

Author: Anthony Bourdead

MLS used to be unwatchable but it's slowly gotten much better over the last five years. Now I just watch the big European matches, whether that's the Madrid derby or a Champion's League match or whatever, and my local MLS team's games.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277253)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277300)

Basketball and crash-ball, a static and inferior version of rugby, are both ridiculous sports.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277473)

it can work if you want it to

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277426)

Past a certain time you could start removing players from the field every 5 minutes starting with defenders. certainly that would open up scoring.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277601)

though i suppose the counterargument is that if you're winning 2-1 late in the game and a guy has a good strike opportunity you now have an incentive to foul since a PK can't beat you

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36277647)

But it's so gay when like France and Germany are in a 0-0 game in the 75th minute and Germany gets a PK to win 1-0.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36278133)

Go watch a live Premier League game between two decent teams in October, or go to a game at the Bernabeu or Camp Nou, or anywhere in Germany, or watch this year’s Champions League knockout round games, then come back and tell us how “boring” soccer is. If you still think it’s boring, you simply don’t like sports.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279009)

One of the best things about NBA, NFL and MLB is that they're the best players in the world. Soccer has too many leagues with the best players spread out all over instead of consolidated.

Soccer would be pretty one eighty of there was just one major league

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279154)

seems pretty spot on

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279195)

If you want soccer, or any sport, to be interesting, bet on a game.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279041)

if i'm vested, i find that a positive outcome doesn't change my life that much whereas a negative outcome really annoys me.

or put another way, Rafael Nadal wining the US Open makes me far less happy than Djokovic winning the US Open makes me annoyed.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279739)

An underdog like Mexico getting an early goal and going full defensive against Germany is also exciting if you understand the game because you realize how difficult it is to keep defensive concentration for an entire game against the best team in the world. The crappy games have been the ones like Poland vs Senegal where the Poles made a ton of dumb mistakes and were disorganized the entire game, even though there were a decent number of goals.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279266)

Aren’t you a hockeymo? hockey is so boring, they have to allow fake fights

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4006264&forum_id=2#36279441)