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kottke.org posts about sports
A view from a ski jump
Ride along with Anders Jacobsen as he takes flight off the end of a ski jump in Lillehammer, Norway.
Very nice, but this fourth grader’s first time on a bigger ramp is by far my favorite ski jump video of all time.
On the intelligence of football players
Michael Lewis made the case in The Blind Side that football players are the smartest in sports because the game is complex and moves fast. For the New Yorker, Nicholas Dawidoff takes a look at what makes a football player smart.
The Redskins’ London Fletcher is undersized and thirty-eight years old, but he’s been able to play for so long because he is a defensive Peyton Manning: seeing the game so lucidly, yelling out the offensive play about to unfold, changing alignments before the snap, organizing the field in real time. Similarly, Lavonte David, who has been with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for two years, is just two hundred and thirty-four pounds — ten to fifteen pounds lighter than most at his position — the Wonderlic scores out on the Internet for him are not especially high, and, like all players, he makes the occasional boneheaded play. But he possesses dedicated study habits and a football clairvoyance that, come Sunday, finds him ignoring the blocking flow only at the one moment during a game when the offense runs the ball away from it.
The Hall of Fame Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Alan Page weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds, the dimension of a modern fullback. Even so, Page was terrifying. His forty-yard-dash time wasn’t anything special, either, but he says that he could run down faster opponents because he always had sense where he was in relation to the blur of bodies around him-he could “understand the situation.” Page is now an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court. “Being a football player requires you to take your emotional self to places that most people shouldn’t go,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to get to know the person who was in my head on a football field. I likely see some of these people in my current job — those who can’t control that person — and they do not very nice things.”
I asked him, “You could control that person on a field?”
“Most of the time,” Page said.
The safety, standing at the rear of the defense, must compensate for the mistakes of others; football intelligence matters more at this position than any other on the defense. At five-eight, a hundred and eighty-eight pounds, the Bills safety Jim Leonhard, a nine-year veteran, is among the smallest and also the slowest starting defensive backs in the game. And yet, watching him on film, he appears to teleport to the ball. Leonhard’s name seems to enter any conversation about football intelligence; he knows every teammate’s responsibilities in every call, and understands the game as twenty-two intersecting vectors. “He’d walk off the bus and you’d think he was the equipment manager,” Ryan Fitzpatrick said. “He’s still in the league because he’s the quarterback of the defense.”
The best and worst NFL announcers
Aaron Gordon of Sports on Earth watched 32 NFL games to determine the best and worst NFL announcers.
In general, there are three types of announcer comments: good, neutral and bad. Good statements offer some type of insight into the game. This is inherently subjective, since different people know different things. Neutral statements constitute the bulk of their utterances: neither offensive nor insightful. As a result, I decided to measure the bad statements.
I divided announcers’ verbal infractions into six categories that are not simply pet peeves, but likely to be annoyances for a majority of NFL viewers.
Happy to see Chris Collinsworth near the top of the heap…he’s my favorite and, while a bit goofy sometimes, offers the best post-Madden analysis in the game. Siragusa and Gruden are like nails on the chalkboard, surprised they didn’t rank much worse.
The case for Dennis Rodman
At Skeptical Sports, Benjamin Morris (who was just hired at FiveThirtyEight) has an extensive series of posts about Dennis Rodman. The conclusion he arrives at after many graphs and a dozen different posts is that Dennis Rodman was probably way better at whatever it was that Dennis Rodman did than any other NBA player was at what they did over the past 25 years.
While there may be room for reasonable disagreement about his character, his sportsmanship, or how and whether to honor his accomplishments, my research and analysis has led me to believe — beyond a reasonable doubt — that Rodman is one of the most undervalued players in NBA history.
I admit to not reading the whole series, but the ramifications of Rodman being “the best 3rd-best player” in the history of the NBA by a wide margin laid out in the finale was fascinating:
“Well, it’s not like he’s as valuable as Michael Jordan, but he’s the best 3rd-best player by a wider margin than Jordan was the best 1st-best player.”
“So you’re saying he was better than Michael Jordan.”
“No, I’m not saying that. Michael Jordan was clearly better.”
“OK, take a team with Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman on it. Which would hurt them more, replacing Michael Jordan with the next-best primary scoring option in NBA history, or replacing Rodman with the next-best defender/rebounder in NBA history?”
“I’m not sure, but probably Rodman.”
“So you’re saying a team should dump Michael Jordan before it should dump Dennis Rodman?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure, I’m not sure exactly how valuable other defender-rebounders are, but regardless, it would be weird to base the whole argument on who happens to be the 2nd-best player. I mean, what if there were two Michael Jordan’s, would that make him the least valuable starter on an All-Time team?”
“Well OK, how common are primary scoring options that are in Jordan’s league value-wise?”
“There are none, I’m pretty sure he has the most value.”
“BALLPARK.”
“I dunno, there are probably between 0 and 2 in the league at any given time.”
“And how common are defender/rebounder/dirty workers that are in Rodman’s league value-wise?”
“There are none.”
“BALLPARK.”
“There are none. Ballpark.”
“So, basically, if a team had Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman on it, and they could replace either with some random player ‘in the ballpark’ of the next-best player for their role, they should dump Jordan before they dump Rodman?”
“Maybe. Um. Yeah, probably.”
“And I assume that this holds for anyone other than Jordan?”
“I guess.”
“So say you’re head-to-head with me and we’re drafting NBA All-Time teams, you win the toss, you have first pick, who do you take?”
“I don’t know, good question.”
“No, it’s an easy question. The answer is: YOU TAKE RODMAN. You just said so.”
“Wait, I didn’t say that.”
“O.K., fine, I get the first pick. I’ll take Rodman… Because YOU JUST TOLD ME TO.”
“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it. It’s possible.”
“So there you go, Dennis Rodman is the single most valuable player in NBA History. There’s your argument.”
I loved watching Rodman play when he was on the Bulls. (One of my early web efforts was The Dennis Rodman Hair Page, which used JavaScript to change Rodman’s hair color.) The guy had such a weird role that he often seemed to be doing either the wrong thing or nothing. But the sheer number of rebounds and his defensive effort were hard to deny.
The discussion of Rodman’s worth reminds me a bit of Rickey Henderson, another unconventional player and a favorite of my pal David, who is always saying Henderson doesn’t get the credit he deserves as one of the best players of all time. (via @pieratt)
Trench run in a wingsuit
As if wingsuit flying wasn’t insane enough, here’s a guy in a wingsuit flying down a trench in Chamonix, like he’s Luke trying to blow up the Death Star.
I don’t even. (via devour)
The best bike trick of 2013
Ethen Godfrey Roberts pulled off a trick called a Superman double backflip the other day and it is a thing to behold:
Sploid says the trick “seems to murder the laws of physics” but if you can close your mouth long enough to stop drooling (this took me several views, BTW), the law of conservation of angular momentum is responsible for the optical illusion that makes the trick look so cool. The trick begins with a tight backwards flip, which happens quickly because all of the weight (human + bike) is distributed close to the center of gravity. By opening his body up in the middle part of the flip, Roberts slows down the rotation, just like a figure skater, diver, or ballerina would by throwing out their arms or legs. And then he gathers himself back onto the bike, which spins quickly again because the weight is all back close to the center. Boom, physics.
The best golf shot of 2013
Backed up against a fence with no room to swing in a recent tournament, Matt Wheatcroft hit a shot straight out of Happy Gilmore, more miniature golf than golf.
(via devour)
What the puck did
Goalies in the NHL didn’t used to wear masks…they didn’t become common until the 60s. For an article in 1966, Life magazine had a professional make-up artist recreate the injuries and more than 400 stitches that goalie Terry Sawchuk accumulated during his 16-year NHL career.
Sawchuk has sustained other injuries not shown here: a slashed eyeball requiring three stitches, a 70% loss of function in his right arm because 60 bone chips were removed from his elbow, and a permanent “sway-back” caused by continual bent-over posture.
Competitive teeter-tottering
The teeterboard is an acrobatic apparatus that looks like a seesaw. This is a pair of acrobats training on a Korean-style teeterboard, where instead of getting catapulted off the board, the participants land back on the board after each jump:
Magnus Carlsen’s “nettlesomeness”
The Chess World Championship is currently underway in Chennai, India. Through nine games, challenger and world #1 Magnus Carlsen is leading reigning world champ and world #8 Viswanathan Anand by the score of 6-3. It seems as though Carlsen’s nettlesomeness is contributing to his good fortunes.
Second, Carlsen is demonstrating one of his most feared qualities, namely his “nettlesomeness,” to use a term coined for this purpose by Ken Regan. Using computer analysis, you can measure which players do the most to cause their opponents to make mistakes. Carlsen has the highest nettlesomeness score by this metric, because his creative moves pressure the other player and open up a lot of room for mistakes. In contrast, a player such as Kramnik plays a high percentage of very accurate moves, and of course he is very strong, but those moves are in some way calmer and they are less likely to induce mistakes in response.
Or perhaps Carlsen’s just inspired by the lovely chess set they’re using? Either way, he needs just one draw in the remaining three games to win the Championship. Or putting it another way, Anand has to win all three of the remaining games to retain the title.
The non-World Cup all-stars
The teams for the 2014 World Cup are almost all set (one qualifying game remains) and there are a lot of world-class players who won’t be playing in the tournament. ESPN FC has compiled a team of the best players who will miss out:
Bale, Lewandowski, and Ibrahimovic. That’s an amazing front line. If not for his hat trick yesterday, Cristiano Ronaldo, perhaps the best player in the world right now, would have made the roster in Ibrahimovic’s stead.
Football as Football
Football as Football is a collection of American football team logos in the style of European football club badges. Here are badges for the Detroit Lions (in the Italian style) and New England Patriots (in the Spanish style).
The coach who never punts
Kevin Kelley is the head football coach at Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. In games, he instructs his team to never punt, to never receive punts, and almost always onside kick.
The numbers Kelley cites are that eye-popping. And he isn’t cooking the books: Cal professor David Romer concluded that teams should not punt when facing fourth-and-4 or less; NFL stats analyst Brian Burke has detailed the need to rethink fourth-down decision-making; Football Outsiders has conflated punts with turnovers. You’ve even read about it on this site. Most fans and analysts who are willing to accept that change is a fundamental part of life have embraced the idea that automatically punting on fourth down doesn’t make sense.
Since Kelley took over, Pulaski is 124-22 and has won three state titles.
Fastest bow in the west
Archer Lars Andersen can shoot 10 arrows in less than 5 seconds, without sacrificing power or accuracy. Andersen learned his technique by studying ancient archery practices…the key is holding the extra arrows in the hand and instinctive shooting.
Update: Anderson is back with a new video and new skills, like incoming shooting arrows with arrows of his own.
(via @psillin & @gavinpurcell)
More former NFL stars have head troubles
Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett is among a growing group of former NFL players who have been diagnosed with diseases caused by years of head trauma and other injuries.
The former Cowboys running back, now 59, said that when he took his Oct. 21 flight from Dallas to Los Angeles for testing, he repeatedly struggled to remember why he was aboard the plane and where he was going. Such episodes, he said, are commonplace when he travels.
Dorsett said he also gets lost when he drives his two youngest daughters, ages 15 and 10, to their soccer and volleyball games.
“I’ve got to take them to places that I’ve been going to for many, many, many years, and then I don’t know how to get there,” he said.
The 1976 Heisman Trophy winner and eighth all-time leading NFL rusher said he has trouble controlling his emotions and is prone to outbursts at his wife and daughters.
“It’s painful, man, for my daughters to say they’re scared of me.” After a long pause, he tearfully reiterated, “It’s painful.”
And I missed this last year, but former Bears QB Jim McMahon is suffering from early-stage dementia.
In an interview with Fox affiliate WFLD-TV, aired Wednesday, the 53-year-old McMahon says he knows where he’s going when in an airport. But when he meets people, “I’m asking two minutes later, ‘Who was that?’
“When my friends call and leave me a message … I’ll read it and delete it before I respond and then I forget who called and left me a message.”
McMahon says he is not worried about his mind withering away. He says he still reads a lot and is doing other things to keep his mind active. However, he said he doesn’t know whether he is getting worse.
These stories are just going to keep coming. Perhaps a true tipping point will come when one of the league’s past megastars is dianosed with CTE…if Brett Favre or Dan Marino or John Elway or Troy Aikman or Ray Lewis or any of the other former players that appear regularly on NFL game broadcasts announces he has CTE or dementia, maybe then the league will take real action? Or not? (via df)
Update: Former NFL player Kevin Turner died at 46 in March and his doctors say he had “advanced CTE” from repeated head trauma.
“This is not ALS; this is CTE,” McKee said. “The severity of Mr. Turner’s CTE was extraordinary and unprecedented for an athlete who died in his 40s.”
Turner died in March at age 46. He had spoken of his certainty that his declining physical state leading to his death was due to his football career. Doctors said they believed he had such advanced CTE because he endured decades of head traumas while playing football.
What if baseball moved to a 16-game season?
Joe Posnanski thinks about how baseball would change if MLB moved to a 16-game schedule like the the NFL. I love stuff like this.
4. Baseball would become dramatically more violent.
I’m not 100% certain of this, of course. But I am probably 75% certain. Right now, we don’t tend to think of baseball as a contact sport. There IS contact — plays at the plate, double-play meetings at second base, the occasional hit-by pitch and ensuing bench-clear — but it’s mostly tangential to the game. Football, meanwhile, is violent at its core. Or anyway, that’s what we think now.
Except — baseball was extremely violent in its early days. And I think that if the game was played just once a week, if you faced each team only once or twice a season, if every game was critical, there would be a lot more violence in baseball. Collisions at the plate would be intensified. Nobody would concede the double play without really taking out the fielder. Pitchers would be much more likely to send message pitches. And I think you would probably find violence where there is none right now.
(via mr)
MLB player quits baseball for creative writing
Adrian Cárdenas, formerly a player for the Chicago Cubs, quit baseball to pursue an education in creative writing and philosophy.
I wish I had looked up more often, even at the cost some of my success. The American dream didn’t tell me that an experience only matters if I acknowledge it, that losing yourself in the game is a good way to lose what makes life meaningful. When you’re standing at the plate and you hit a sharp foul ball to the backstop, the spot on the bat that made contact gets hot; the American dream forgot to tell me to step back and enjoy the smell of burnt wood.
Cheerleader does 44 backflips in 34 seconds
This video of Atlanta cheerleader Mikayla Clark breaking the world backflip record is mesmerizing. I did not know there was a world backflip record, but here is someone breaking it last year, too.
Yes, it is gymnastics day on kottke.org, what of it?
Amazing robot gymnast
I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from this video of a robotic gymnast doing a routine on the high bar, but holy cow! I audibly gasped at the 33-second mark and again at 57 seconds.
Looks like a home-built, just some guy in his garage. The robot has learned some new tricks since that video was made. Here’s a quintuple backflip landing:
A double twist that it didn’t quite land:
And it does floor exercises as well…here’s a double back handspring:
(via @moth)
Mike Tyson’s life as a young thug
In New York Magazine this week, Mike Tyson writes about growing up in Brooklyn and his discovery of boxing as a way out and up.
Having to wear glasses in the first grade was a real turning point in my life. My mother had me tested, and it turned out I was nearsighted, so she made me get glasses. They were so bad. One day I was leaving school at lunchtime to go home and I had some meatballs from the cafeteria wrapped up in aluminum to keep them hot. This guy came up to me and said, “Hey, you got any money?” I said, “No.” He started picking my pockets and searching me, and he tried to take my fucking meatballs. I was resisting, going, “No, no, no!” I would let the bullies take my money, but I never let them take my food. I was hunched over like a human shield, protecting my meatballs. So he started hitting me in the head and then took my glasses and put them down the gas tank of a truck. I ran home, but he didn’t get my meatballs. I still feel like a coward to this day because of that bullying. That’s a wild feeling, being that helpless. You never ever forget that feeling. That was the last day I went to school. I was 7 years old, and I just never went back to class.
The piece is adapted from Tyson’s upcoming memoir, Undisputed Truth. Tyson wrote the book with Larry Sloman, author of Reefer Madness who has also ghostwritten for Howard Stern, Anthony Kiedis, and KISS’s Peter Criss.
Update: Spike Lee directed a documentary version of Undisputed Truth; it’ll air on HBO on November 16. Here’s the trailer:
20 minutes at Rucker Park
Flinder Boyd follows streetballer TJ Webster on a cross-country bus trip for an opportunity to play his way onto a team in the prestigious EBC tournament at storied Rucker Park.
Despite his small size and light frame, he carries, like a weapon stashed under a vest, a 38” vertical jump. Along with his self-proclaimed “great” outside jump shot, he knows that during this 20-minute open tryout he’ll have to do enough to impress one of the handful of coaches glaring at him from the stands. They represent teams in the upcoming Entertainer’s Basketball Classic, an eight-week long tournament and the jewel of New York’s basketball summer circuit.
Just two days ago, TJ stepped off a cross-country bus with every penny to his name wedged into the bottom of his bag for a chance to change his life. It’s a long shot; he understands that, and so do the other nine players on the court. There are only two ways to make an EBC team, either by reputation or by being selected after your performance in the open run.
Each year, one, maybe two players, at most will be good enough to be granted a jersey and, in essence, a pass inside the halls of the cathedral of street basketball; a chance to feel the nearly religious power of Rucker Park - the same court that has hosted some of the greatest players to ever play the game.
Sometimes dreams are best kept that way.
The most difficult hole of golf in the world
630 yards. Par 3. Tee is accessible only by helicopter. $1,000,000 for a hole-in-one. Meet the world’s most difficult hole of golf:
(via quora)
Wingsuit flyer lands safely on water
(Just so I don’t bury the lede too much here: THIS IS INSANE.) Wingsuit flyers keep upping the ante. For awhile, it was enough to glide at 100 mph a foot or two off the ground. Then they started flying through gaps between skyscrapers. And then through holes in mountains. Last year, Gary Connery landed safely in a pile of cardboard boxes without the use of a parachute. And now, watch as Raphael Dumont, straps on his wingsuit, climbs an Italian mountain, and LANDS SAFELY ON A LAKE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE.
Raphael Dumont, human seaplane. That shit cray.
Update: Rumblings on Twitter are indicating that this is fake. I WANT TO BELIEVE. (But that footage of the landing is shot on the world’s shakiest camera for no reason so…)
NHL goal of the year?
The NHL season is only a few days old, but Sharks rookie Tomas Hertl may have already scored the goal of the year. This is crazy:
Also, that was his fourth goal of the game. (via grantland)
League of Denial
League of Denial, the Frontline documentary on the NFL and concussions, is available online for anyone to watch for free.
Kayaking Down a Drainage Ditch
Watch as several kayakers rocket down a drainage ditch in BC at speeds approaching 35 mph.
That looks like a lot of fun. See also what fast looks like. (via devour)
Michael Jordan returning to the NBA for one game?
In talking to Bill Simmons for a Grantland NBA preview show, former NBA star Jalen Rose predicts that Michael Jordan will play one game for the Charlotte Bobcats this season.
Per Betteridge’s law of headlines, Jordan will not play in the NBA this season, but it’s an intriguing possibility. Jordan’s 50 years old but he owns the team so you never know.
NFL deliberately campaigned against science regarding head injuries
According to an upcoming book by ESPN reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, the NFL “conducted a two-decade campaign to deny a growing body of scientific research that showed a link between playing football and brain damage”.
Excerpts published Wednesday by ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated from the book, “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth,” report that the NFL used its power and resources to discredit independent scientists and their work; that the league cited research data that minimized the dangers of concussions while emphasizing the league’s own flawed research; and that league executives employed an aggressive public relations strategy designed to keep the public unaware of what league executives really knew about the effects of playing the game.
Excerpts of the book are available from ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated. An episode of Frontline based in part on the book airs next week. Interestingly, ESPN was collaborating with Frontline on this program, but they pulled out of it in August.
Meet the players in the East/West College Bowl
Saw this awhile ago and was reminded of it b/c of a clip on Monday Night Football last night: comedy duo Key & Peele poke fun at the increasingly creative names and alma maters of football players in this sketch.
Nyquillus Dillwad, D’Pez Poopsie, Fartrell Cluggins, Ladennifer Jadaniston, and Benedict Cumberbatch are all on my fantasy team this year. See also last year’s video. (Davoin Shower-Handel!)
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