The joys and unjoys of sport
It's kind of depressing that we have to just get through the Beijing Olympics and Qatar World Cup but at least the NFL was good right?
Welcome to the latest edition of SSWOS, the Sick, Sad World of Sports, where sports is the mechanism by which we learn about the depths of shithousery and assholery and dipshittery of the human soul.
I hope you find it fun or informative but not both. If you want more of this particular species of brain worms, follow @scksadwos.
I also write exclusively about rugby league on pythagonrl.com and @pythagonrl.
The unjoys of sport
I’d like to think that one of the things we’ll look back on the 2010s, and maybe the 2020s, is how lean everything was run. Capitalism, especially aided by constant leaps forward in digital technology without a corresponding understanding of What It All Means by people who make decisions, has managed to find and squeeze every last inefficiency to the point that the economic system largely relies on people who have very little left to give but don’t dare stop because they might not be able to start again1.
This philosophy has shown up in sports in a number of ways. The emergence of analytics is probably the least harmful outcome, resulting in the deletion of useless received wisdom for real world data with a view to actually winning games. A secondary consequence is the emergence of corporate risk management, which is harmful only in the sense that it’s antithetical to sporting entertainment, deadening the action on the field, but no real harm is done.
The most recent episode of Sports Unlocked - a podcast that covers a lot of the ground covered here but from a position of authoritative knowledge instead of aimless pseudointellectual wanderings - talked about the joylessness of the recent Tokyo Olympics and the upcoming Beijing Olympics and Qatar FIFA World Cup.
I don’t think that’s quite right - the Tokyo Olympcis was still a delight, even without crowds because what else was I going to do in lockdown? Not enjoy the men’s high jump final just because no one was there? - but they’ve hit on something. Specifically, it’s the idea that a decision was made some time ago, it’s too late to change it now, there’s too much money and too many legally binding contracts on the line to cancel, so we have to grit our teeth, ignore what may turn out to be crimes against humanity, and get on with it. It turns out that’s not as fun as it could be.
What we have is a system that no longer has the ability to say no. More accurately, the system2 chose to ignore these issues in the pursuit of increased revenues. Indeed, the system requires increased revenues because sitting still means someone else is eating your lunch. It seems then that having a moral framework is an inefficiency that’s been done away with.
It perhaps started in 2001 when China was given the 2008 Summer Olympics. There was a gold rush after that. The World Cup went to South Africa and then Brazil and then Russia and now on to Qatar, the Olympics to Russia, Brazil and now back to China, and everyone - F1, cycling, cricket, golf, whatever - went to the Gulf States. At the time, these were the countries that were expected to economically overhaul the West thanks to favourable demographics and by extrapolating certain lines on certain charts. It’s now twenty years later and if these countries (other than China) are any closer than they were, it’s only because the West has chosen to go backwards.3
Instead, many of these places were left with crumbling white elephants. The 40,000 seat Arena da Amazonia, built in Manaus for the 2014 World Cup - a place with no professional football teams - might be the most egregious example, especially considering, you know, the whole climate situation. Some, like the Gulf States, are pushing on, irrespective of the interest of the local population.
The powers that be seem to realise they’ve overstepped the mark. The Olympics will be going to France, Italy, the USA and then Australia and the World Cup to North America in 2026. This is not to say any of these places are more moral but they at least have the sports infrastructure in place and its likely people will attend without having to be compelled to do so via the government that paid for it. There is a non-monetary point in hosting these events. Any joy experienced may be coincidental. We’ll see if it continues when the hosts of the 2030 World Cup and Winter Olympics are announced.
In a completely different part of the sports world, the Tampa Bay Rays’ mooted move to Montreal was back in the news this week as the MLB officially killed the plan.
The existence of professional sports team are predicated on leveraging the citizens’ civic pride and their interest in watching the game being played and turning that into dollars spent. The operation is considered a success if there’s fans paying more money than it costs to pay the players4.
Normally, I would support a subversion of the existing conservative status quo but, as I’ve written previously, this seems both really stupid and unlikely to work. In Europe and Australia, people in different suburbs in the same city won’t share teams. It seems baffling to think North Americans are so different they would share a team across national borders.
It seems that the system has decided to test whether the ‘civic pride’ part of the traitional framework for professional sports is actually still necessary. As Jerry Seinfeld famously joked, we’re basically going for laundry at this point and if the demand for 81 games is not there in Tampa, why not try to move some to another locale?
Like soccer’s Super League, I doubt this is the last we’ll hear of something like this. If civic pride can be dispensed with and more money made elsewhere, someone will find a way to do it. It will suck, then we’ll get used to it and then it’ll seem weird it was ever any other way. In exchange, we’ll all be a little more dead inside as the system takes another inch.
Whether we’ll see a change in this long-running trend remains to be seen. In my adult life, I’ve only ever seen it go one way. Looking back in time, it’s remarkable how optimistic people used to be but we live in era of There Is No Alternative - thank you, boomer-led cultural ossification that seems destined to infect their children - and there really hasn’t been one offered.
The grace, the beauty of sports
The joys of sport
The American football season is drawing to a close and for those of us who follow the pigskin without any human skin in the game, it’s been great. College football has its most unpredictable season since 2007. Michigan finally beat Ohio State. Florida and Oregon collapsed completely. Alabama lost a game, then beat Georgia and then got beaten in the National Championship. The Rose Bowl was a delight to watch.
The NFL season was similarly minded, with the bottom of the barrel Jags beating the Bills, the Texans beating the Titans, the Jets capping both the Bengals and Titans, and the Lions beat both the Packers and Cardinals. At one point, you could’ve set the line for win total for those four teams at 0.5 and I think plenty would’ve taken the under. It seemed the number one seeds in each conference looked decidedly mortal.
So it was. After a dreadful wild card weekend - again I defer to Tom Ley’s piece - we were treated to an absolute peach of a divisional weekend, featuring four closely fought and high quality games, setting up enticing conference match ups.
People also seem to be enjoying the tennis5 for different reasons, now that Djokovic is out of the picture. The Winter Olympics is a week away and despite the politics human rights abuses, the listserv issues and the total lack of real snow6, the Olympics will deliver on spectacle, as it always does. The FIFA World Cup will do likewise.7 The NBA and NHL are in full flight and we’re not far off Australian football seasons resuming, the All-Irelands and there might even be some baseball at some point8.
There is - as always - plenty to enjoy in your preferred sports and plenty to look forward to. Sport can be a very effective escape from the real world for a few hours at a time but it always comes with the other stuff. It was ever thus and likely ever will be. It’s up to you to choose how it affects you.
Very normal things
I don’t know how on the money this assertion is. It seems like the kind of leap I would’ve made if I was being paranoid, but seems a bit too on-the-nose.
Either way, the background is people have remembered that Peng Shuai’s location (and freedom thereof) is still an issue to be resolved. Anti-CCP politicians in Melbourne distributed some Where is Peng Shuai? t-shirts at the Australian Open. The Australian Open confisicated the t-shirts, on political grounds, and then later relented.
I’m reluctant to naturally side with a random Australian independent politician, given their collective track record and there’s a lot of ways to oppose the CCP, not all of which are liberal democratic. Perhaps I’ve just been brainwashed by the commies and all the Cold War cultural warriors were right.
My main takeaway is that Tennis Australia - like pretty much everything else in Australia - is run by dummies.
It’s a bit old now but this is a good primer in the rifts within the collegiate sporting structure, largely caused by money generated and allocated to the few.
Paul Blart, Mall Cop is the ex-Saints coach Sean Payton
I read two pieces about the new Netflix movie - one on The Ringer and the other at SB Nation - and have concluded that I will probably not bother watching it.
I will obviously have a take on this (at some point) but the read itself was really interesting and ticked a lot of my personal boxes.
One of those other inefficiencies might be having normal non-corporate box people turn up to live sporting events. I think it’s telling that the Coyotes might prefer a smaller venue with boxes than a larger one without. Have a think about how reliant most pro sports teams are on corporate box money, as opposed to ordinary ticket revenue, and how this might project into the future.
#ModernPentathlonWatch
We could see the fifth discipline make its debut as early as March when the new modern pentathlon World Cup starts. For the first time in history, a bunch of people signing NDAs has resulted in zero leaks so there’s no real clues what it will be. Obstacle racing feels a bit… meh but I’m not really sure what other options the UIPM has.
I can’t tell if the Olympics getting serious and dropping pentathlon from the LA games has silenced the opposition to this reform or if I simply don’t hear about it because I don’t follow them on Twitter anymore and they have zero cut through. Probably won’t bother looking into to it, if I’m honest.
News from around the grounds
Wrestling: UWW Changes Rules to Promote Active Wrestling, Balance in Brackets
Cyclocross: Italy won the mixed relay test event from a field of seven in Fayetteville, USA
See the latest on the Governors and Leagues lists on Twitter.
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The rest of us get to work from home and faff about writing sports newsletters.
At the risk of de-personalising the very real people who made these very real decisions but it’s a collective effort that a lot of people are simultaneously a little bit responsible for.
Partly probably also related to the awarding of these events prior to the GFC when it became clear many of these countries were sovereign debt crises waiting to happen, made worse by the inordinate spending to put on these events (see also: Goldman Sachs in Greece, 2004).
It seems clear owners would rather not pay players at all but that’s for another day.
I’d probably question whether tennis was ever a possession of the people that could be returned but Ben would know better.
I have no idea if this is real or when this was taken but it suggests that the Winter Olympics in Abu Dhabi in 2034 is on the cards.
The Qataris will work to death as many migrant workers as it takes for the event to be a success.
Maybe everyone should take the year off, just as a little treat.