A-Rod

Excerpt from today's press conference:

I screwed up big time, but I think, the only thing I ask from this group today and the American people is to judge me from this day forward.  And that’s all I can ask for.

I think this sounds like a great idea.

Only 763 more home runs until A-Rod passes Barry Bonds and saves the home run record!

Glasgow-Bound

In about 6 hours I'll be on a flight to the United Kingdom.  I'm studying abroad this semester at the University of Glasgow.  This means it'll be a lot harder to keep up with the MLB playoff races and the NFL, but it'll also put me right in the heart of the Old Firm.  Hopefully, I'll be able to make use of my BritRail pass to get down to EPL country as well.

What all this means, though, is that I'll probably be writing less frequently (not that I wrote all that frequently to begin with).  If I do write, expect it to be about British sports and sports anywhere else I manage to visit.  And if you know me, you know it won't just be the big-name sports and teams... I'm already looking forward to catching my first Scottish Rocks match in Kelvin Hall....

Cheers.  Thanks for reading.  If you have any suggestions on where to go, or advice on how to get tickets when I get there, please leave a comment or drop me an email (bcolbert at gmail dot com).

Thoughts on Gymnastics

I've been watching a lot of Olympics coverage. I got discouraged with Men's Soccer tournament after the highs and lows the US faced, but there's still women's soccer, Michael Phelps and the Redeem Team to get patriotic about, not to mention the novelty of watching niche sports that we only get to see once every four years, like kayaking, handball and racewalking. I even took to watching gymnastics for the first time. Watching the Chinese Men's team on the rings was vaguely similar to watching the 2007-08 New England Patriots in the sense that you got the feeling that you were watching the sport reach near perfection, and I enjoy watching anything that gets you thinking "this is something special, we may never see this done this well again."

The most controversial part of that last sentence wasn't saying I enjoyed gymnastics (it was an impressive feat of strength!), nor was it comparing great men's gymnastics to great football (I said vaguely similar), nor was it calling the 18-1 Patriots perfect (because those first few months of the season WERE football perfection... leave me alone). No, the controversial part was calling gymnastics a sport. The guys over at SportsLawBlog have been trying to define sport for a while now, and while I've always liked one-liners on the subject ("Sorry, Curling, but if you can play with a beer in one hand it's not a sport,") I admire the more academic approach. The sticking point against gymnastics, of course, is the "lack of objective scoring." But part of why I watched the gymnastics this year was the new scoring system, put into place because of controversial judging decisions at the last Olympiad.

Sure, I was mostly intrigued by the societal impact of sending the message to these little girls that there is no "perfect 10." But in addition to that, the experts were saying that this system was more objective than before. The judges are given access to instant replays, both slow motion and regular speed, and allegedly there's a scoring template and rubric that all the judges are following. I, Joe American Sports Fan, can't tell what should get a tenth of a point deducted or three-tenths deducted while I watch, but I was willing to accept that the scoring could be objective to a trained eye. At the end of the day all that comes up on the TV is the start value, one score from the judges called the execution score, and then the total of the two numbers. Start value? Objective. And just one judges' score? It sounds like an improvement...

SLB's most recent piece on the subject referenced the women's individual all-around finals, which I actually thought had acceptable judging... But at the individual event finals, the world stood still while the judges worked through multiple tiebreakers to determine the gold medalist. Both gymnasts had the same start value and received the same score from the judges. Since gymnastics isn't allowed to give multiple golds anymore (for whatever reason), we went to tiebreakers. The first tiebreaker involved dropping the highest and lowest scores and averaging the deductions; still tied. The second tiebreaker averaged the three lowest judges scores - and the youthful He Kexin's .933 was less than Nastia Liukin's .966. Gold to He, silver to Liukin.

Now of course, these tiebreakers are arbitrary, but all tiebreakers are arbitrary - soccer uses PKs, and the NFL effectively determines winners with a coin toss. The problem that the Olympic tiebreaker exposed is that this new judging system is just as reliant on biased judging as before. We still have a pack of judges from non-gymnastics countries giving their own individual scores - they're just not all shown on TV. Nastia's scores ranged from 9.3 to 8.8 - and at that range, either it's at least partially subjective, or somebody's got it wrong. Referees make mistakes (some more than others), but no self-respecting referees should differ that widely on a call. If we're going to have a panel of judges, they should work through the scoring as a panel. If one guy sees an error, they should discuss whether or not it's a deduction, and how big a deduction, and so forth. I like the idea of only one score showing up on screen, but that score shouldn't be an average of the same old biased individual scores. It should be one real consensus. I don't care if this takes longer, just like I don't care if instant replay slows down NFL games. What's important in sports is making the right call.

If gymnastics can prove that there is a right call - that the scoring can truly be objective and not simply a beauty contest of competing personal preferences - then it should do everything in its power to prove it. That means getting judges from countries who have gold-medal histories in the sport, and having them objectively agree on what the score should be. Until then, as far as I'm concerned, gymnastics will rejoin diving, equestrian and ice dancing on the list of non-sports at the Olympics that I'll watch in passing for amusement while I wait for the actual sports.

Swimming in the Morning - Should TV Dictate Sports Schedules?

My last day of work for the summer was last week, but I still woke up at 8 AM this morning. I wanted to watch Coach K's Redeem Team take on Australia live from Shanghai in their last exhibition before the Olympics. Thanks to ESPN2, I could, and the Americans won 87-76.

(One quick sidenote on Australia - their national basketball team's nickname is the Boomers. Apparently, it's slang for a large male kangaroo. Not bad, but I was really hoping for "Balleroos" or something. I guess I'll do with just the Socceroos and Olyroos.)

I love waking up at odd hours for sporting events like this. The 2002 World Cup in Korea/Japan was great - I would go to sleep around 7 PM, wake up in time for a 2AM kick-off, and show up at school wide awake with a game and a half of soccer under my belt. In 2003, it was the America's Cup in New Zealand - I fell in love with sailing as I finished essays in the early hours of the morning. I found myself last year cheering on Team New Zealand (at 9 AM, from Valencia, Spain) to win the cup back from Alinghi so I could get my midnight sailing back.

Of course, these are instances when I've been able to drastically alter my internal clock and sleep schedule for sports. Also, with EURO 2008 kickoffs occuring at primetime Euro-time, they made for nice afternoon viewing for me here in the States. Globalism isn't too bad when you've got a college schedule, but one of these days, the real world will catch up to me and I won't be so lucky. I'll have to miss a sporting event because it's taking place on the other side of the world at some ungodly hour.

...but not if NBC has anything to say about it. NBC paid $3.55 billion dollars for exclusive rights to broadcast the 2000-2008 Olympics in the American market, they want to get their money's worth. This year, they're planning 3600 hours of coverage, but a couple of minute-long races are causing a bit of a ruckus.

Back in 2006, the IOC announced, at NBC's behest, that some swimming finals would be held in the morning to better line up with American primetime programming schedules. Swimming finals are traditionally held at night, and swimmers are traditionally very careful and cognizant of their body clocks. The Australian swimmers are complaining that an American company could buy an Olympic final for Michael Phelps. I think that's a little extreme, considering Phelps will have to acclimate himself to all the time differences the same way the other swimmers will.

It brings back memories of this years European Champions League Final, which was between two English sides (Chelsea and Manchester United) but was played at a neutral site in Moscow. Kickoff was at 10:45PM local time in order to have a sensible broadcast time back in the UK, but the game went to PKs and it was nearly 2 in the morning by the time the cup was raised. Not that I think any of the fans minded (the Man U fans, at least).

In this day of on demand music and video, sports remain one of the last forms of entertainment where watching it live matters. The live broadcast of a big episode of a popular TV series is still a big deal, as is the premier of a movie, but neither is as time-sensitive as a sporting event - you'll probably go online to watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy that you missed, but rather than to watch a whole game, you'll probably just watch the highlights and check the box score. Tape delays just aren't a satisfactory option for broadcasters anymore - any timeshifting will be done at the user's discretion, thankyouverymuch. Airing the swimming finals 12 hours later during primetime? Will some people will watch? Of course, but it'll lose the magic; it won't be Must-See TV, because the other half of the world has already seen it.

So that leaves two options. One option is to air the event as it occurs and let people (like me) who want to watch it find a way to watch it. NBC chose the other option: rescheduling the event, to the detriment of the local market (and possibly to the competitors) but for the benefit of the larger TV market. Who should have to change their schedules - the athletes or the fans? And wouldn't the athletes competing at their top level be in everyone's best interest?

All I know for certain is that the Spain, Argentina, and Greece are going to try packing 5 defender's inside to take away Team USA's penetration game. I also know that the 24 points St. Mary's Aussie guard Patrick Mills scored against Miami in this years' NCAA Tournament wasn't the last we'll hear from him. And I know these things because I woke up early this morning. If you missed it, here are the highlights, and here's the box score.

Felt the Lightning, and Waited On The Thunder...

Reports were out as early as Sunday that the former Seattle Supersonics had chosen their new moniker - say hello to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Honestly, I don't think it's all that bad a name (this guy does, but anyone from Seattle will have a problem no matter what the name is), though my gut reaction was if they were going the extreme weather route, one would think that Cyclones would be a) more indicative of the region's climate, and b) more in keeping with the alliterative history of the franchise... whatever, anything's better than the Outlaws. Every time I heard that suggestion, I was horrified at the thought of what that logo might've looked like.

But if the consensus is that the name is finalized, why hasn't an official announcement made? It could be because T-shirts bearing the generic OKC NBA logo went on sale this week. That's right, the plain black jerseys the team debuted at a Summer League game in Orlando on July 7th, days after the team reached a settlement with the City of Seattle. The shirts are flying off the shelves - that report says it's because the shirts are a "collectors item," but I think it's more than that (more on that in a minute). The point is - why would you reveal the official name, logo and colors right now? You've got plenty of time to sell those jerseys and hats. People will only buy the generic t-shirts until they see the real logo. Clay Bennett and friends are showing once again that they know a thing or two about running a business. Whether you like him or not, Bennett proved in Seattle that he can talk the talk, and now there's no denying that these guys can walk the walk as well.

So that is why, to borrow from Bob Seger, we're waiting on the Thunder. Expect to see these shirts at OKC games for years to come - fans will wear them proudly as a symbol of being with the team since the very beginning. These, and the NO/OKC Hornets jerseys, and even old Sonics jerseys - every chapter of the city's NBA history will make its way into the seats of the Ford Center, regardless who the League and the courts think owns the franchise's history. I look over at my Beat LA t-shirt - I know I'm gonna be wearing that to Celtics events until it has wholes in it because of what it represents to me and to other fans. So sure, it's a business move for Bennett and friends - that $75 million for the City of Seattle has to come from somewhere - but I like the move from a fan standpoint as well. People of Oklahoma - go pick up one of those generic shirts while you can. In a couple of years, it'll be the ultimate throwback.

Year 1 of US Development Academy Comes to a Close

Why was this weekend so big for American soccer? It had nothing to do with next week's MLS All-Star Game, or anything else going on at the MLS. It had nothing to do with the fast-approaching Olympic Games. And it certainly had nothing to do with SuperLiga, the exhibition/tournament with nothing at stake except an inconclusive amount of prize money.

The big event of this past weekend was the finals of the inaugural year of the US Soccer Development Academy. Last summer, the United States Soccer Federation decided to create the Development Academy to try and change the face of youth soccer in this country, which for years consisted of independent "club teams" competing in as many leagues and holiday tournaments as possible.

Over in England (and other footballing nations), the norm is the "youth academy" - players to an academy run by a professional club as early as 8 years old. The young player gets to benefit from the professional clubs resources and coaching, and the club has first dibs on the kids when they’re ready for the big time. While they make headlines for the players they transfer in from other clubs, Liverpool and Manchester United always have a handful of homegrown players on the roster. They invest a great deal in training and coaching talented players from a very young age because they reap the benefits when a player has been trained in Man U football from Day 1.

I’m a huge fan of American soccer, but even I’ll admit that our version of the beautiful game is less beautiful than the version played in England, Spain, Brazil, etc. And the biggest reason for that is that our players are less technically sound – we’re athletic, but even at the NCAA level you’ll see a lot of “tunnel vision” and not a lot of passing around the field. USSF decided that this is because of the results-oriented scheduling of the country’s top “club soccer” teams. Until this year, those teams were playing in tournaments every holiday weekend on top of their usual schedules, and the kids often played for both a club team and a high school team – meaning year-round games. With this many games, practices were minimal. Maybe American sporting culture doesn’t think very highly of practice, but when competing at that top level, the big difference is made at the training facility. Not a game, not a game… not a game. We talkin’ ‘bout practice.

Until this year, there were very few options with that kind of training focus. USSF would pick out 20 players a year for the Olympic Residency program at the IMG Soccer Academy in Bradenton, FL. Then Brad Friedel started his Premier Soccer Academies in Ohio (with the hilariously pompous mailing address 2101 Brad Friedel's Avenue of Future Stars). Then MLS started to get into the act, with Chivas USA and Red Bull New York starting up Academy teams.

The US Soccer Development Academy invited the elite club teams from around the country to buy into the sort of system and regimen laid out by the IMG Academy. Approximately 30 games a year, minimum three days of practice and one day of rest every week. No extra tournaments – just the regularly-scheduled games and tournaments with the other Academy teams. Critics are bemoaning the death of high school soccer, but the level of play on the field this past weekend showed what a focus on practice can do. The Baltimore Bays took down the surprise-finalists LAFC 4-2 in extra time in Friday’s U-17/18 Final, and Baltimore’s Chris Agorsor is being called the next great American striker. Check out highlights of the various teams on USSoccer's YouTube Page.

Congratulations are in order for all the teams who participated, and let’s look forward to big things out of Agorsor and all his teammates. I look forward to the Development Academy continuing into the future – I think it can only be positive for MLS. Even the NCAA should benefit, as many of these well-trained players may still look for a college education. Besides, college athletics will always continue to play a prominent role in our national sporting landscape… won’t they?

Time to Rethink Tagging Music

I try to take pretty good care of my music collection. I've got 7,220 files in my iTunes library, which is just barely too much for my 30 gig iPod. No "Unknown Artist - Track 1" for me; I do a pretty good job tagging my songs. I may be a little lax on album titles (or take some liberties with Greatest Hits albums for the sake of organization), but I'll usually hit up MusicBrainz to double check track number, song titles and artist, etc.

I'm not the best or most thorough, nor do I have the biggest collection out there, but I like what I have, and I like being able to find songs in a way that makes sense to me and hopefully makes sense to whoever's controlling my iPod in the passenger seat of my car. It's imperfect, though; my biggest complaint is that I can only file songs under one artists' name. Usually, I'll defer to MusicBrainz, but consider the "Sum 41 Rock Remix" of Ludacris' "Get Back." I want that song to come up alongside my other Sum 41 songs, so it's filed with Sum 41 as the artist instead of Ludacris. And I think of "Under Pressure" as being by "Queen & David Bowie," not one or the other (and for once MusicBrainz agrees), so I have an Artist listing for "Queen & David Bowie" that contains only that song.

When looking for a solution to this problem, the closest I could find was over at the excellent site LifeHacker. A few months back there was a discussion of tag-cloud-style music tags, but specifically in the sense of sorting songs by the moods and emotions they evoke. The best solution offered for that problem was what I do anyway - I make a lot of playlists, and they're usually several hundred songs long. I use playlists to function as a "controlled random" - making sure I don't get any Dropkick Murphys when I'm trying to sleep, or any Mozart while I'm driving. Effectively, I'm tagging my music almost like I tag my emails in Gmail, with playlists serving the same purpose as labels. The only thing I took away from the discussion at LifeHacker was the idea of adding codewords to the "Comment" field of the ID3 tag, so that the playlist sorting would stay with the song.

For those who've never really looked into it, ID3 tags are a bit of information (actually, up to 256MB of information) contained in the MP3 file. According to Wikipedia, the concept of ID3 was born in 1996, a year after the first MP3 encoding software went public (the letters .mp3 were chosen to be the file extension 13 years ago today (July 14, 1995)). The first version of the tags, ID3v1, used a limited character set and couldn't even handle some songs' full titles if they were too long or used certain punctuation marks or foreign characters. ID3v2 tags have increased character limits, as well as new fields to hold album art, bitrate, and other pieces of information about the song. A lot of music organizers advertise themselves as "ID3v3" but according to ID3.org, there hasn't been a new standard since ID3v2.4 was proposed in November of 2000 (and even that hasn't fully taken hold due to "some disagreements on some of the revisions and the tremendous inertia present in the software and hardware marketplace.").

But I think it's time for a new version of ID3. ID3 is still stuck in a "Windows 98"-era mindset of folder-organization. That era has passed, and Flickr/del.icio.us/Gmail-style tagging is the way we now need to sort our information. I shouldn't have to attribute a song to one artist when 3 or 4 artists contribute to the track. I should be able to select an artist from the Artists list and see every song they've performed on, as a headliner or in a featuring role. And a playlist should be a list of songs to be played in order, not a workaround for music sorting.

Of course, I don't know if that's feasible practically. And I don't know how to program it. My plea to those who are better with computers than I am - give us an ID3v3 for the Web 2.0 crowd and a media player that can read it. Don't do it for me; do it for Lil Wayne and the 77 tracks he appeared on in 2007.

...and while we're at it, who else thinks that alphabetical order might be obsolete in a digital world?