Sports

Beijing 2008, The Games

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I am a sports junkie. Since I have been a wee lad I have loved sports and followed them. Watching them on TV has a somewhat calming effect on me, or lets me blow off steam. I get to escape the realities of my world for a few hours.

Since I have been alive I have enjoyed the Olympics, Summer and Winter. The drug scandals and other controversies such as fixed judging and other things like that piss me off, but I always end up coming back. I just love sports.

I would like to take you on a tour of the events that are featured at the Summer Olympics this year, and make a comment or two on them.

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Good Karma

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I got slagged like never before in my posts about copyright infringement here and here.   Eventually I came to the realization that I was wrong in my practice, no matter how hard I wanted to justify it.   It killed me, but I decided to stop watching the show through the illegal means.

Well, I see today that one of my favorite networks, Versus, is going to be airing the very show that I never thought I would get to see, Contender Asia.   They will call it Contender Muay Thai over here.   Unfortunately I  know who the eventual winner is,  from my normal surfing in the  Muay Thai and fighting forums.   Sometimes maybe there is good karma to be had.   I can’t wait.

NFL Economic Bizarro World

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Carl and I have pounded practically everyone we know with the total economic sense shown by Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland Athletics mapped out in the outstanding book Moneyball. If you haven’t read it, you should. The book is a very easy read and quite entertaining even if you are not into baseball. Perfect summer reading.

I don’t want to ruin any of the book for those planning on reading it, but past this point will reveal a few spoilers to help me make a larger point.

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The Cargo Cult Revisited

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The “Cargo Cult” is the name of a religion that sprung up in the far islands of the Pacific after the second world war. When the war was in full swing, the Western Allies came in and brought all kinds of different foods, technologies, and the like. To the natives on these islands, who didn’t have the concept of how these goods were manufactured, the term “cargo cult” was coined to define the religious connotations that they placed on these goods. To an educated Westerner, most people probably had a brief chuckle at the thought of people treating day-to-day manufactured goods as objects of religious reverence.

Bizarrely enough, it was the cargo cult that leaped to mind when I read this very interesting article in a recent issue of New York Times magazine. According to the article, girls suffer serious injuries while playing in competitive sports such as soccer and basketball at a rate significantly higher than men playing the same sport. On a typical soccer team of 20 girls, for example, the injury rate (ruptured A.C.L.’s, a major injury) would be on average 4 out of 20.
Hurt Girls
The article describes how a typical high performing traveling team generally has a large number of injuries, but the girls keep playing through the injuries, buoyed by the same “small group cohesion” that SLA Marshall wrote about in his analysis of US WW2 veterans (whether SLA Marshall was ultimately discredited is grist for another post). This cohesion bonds the girls to their team mates, and they keep playing through injuries despite the pain and risk of long term debilitating injuries.

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Bear Economics

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Dan is usually up on these things and he emails me as soon as it comes across the wires… another arrest of Cedric Benson, the Chicago Bears running back. He was arrested for drinking while boating and later, for drinking and driving. He just got released, so at least this soap opera is over.

On this blog, at least, Cedric is also known for other things – such as being a lousy running back on the Bears, a player who did nothing in the Super Bowl, and usually drops as soon as being hit, and can’t seem to find the hole or outrun the secondary. These attributes, bad as they are, are even worse since the Bears are traditionally a running team and have little else to fall back upon on offense (remember, Hester is on special teams and not proven as a receiver).

All of these items, however, are done to death everywhere else, and one thing about this blog is that we at least try to have a fresh angle on something or just leave it alone entirely. What really interests me, however, is the economics of the deal.

Recently I wrote about REM – the band (not sleeping), and how they stopped noodling around and actually decided to put out an album people would want to listen to – which just happened to be coincidentally linked to the fact that their guaranteed contract expired and going forward they would have to earn their lavish rock star lifestyles.

The question is – did the nature of Cedric’s contract encourage his lackadaisical attitude towards playing and his stupid off field behavior? I can’t seem to find the details of his contract but it was for $35 million, with a significant portion guaranteed. It was a five year contract, and he “played” for three years.

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