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.