What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

Anton Chiguhr/No country for old men

Yesterday, for the Buffalo Bills, it was a chance to get to the pinnacle of professional football, Super Bowl LVI. And, if an overnight poll is accurate, I, like 80 percent of Americans, felt cheated and was ready to write a blog about the necessity of changing the league’s overtime rule. Letting the game end with Josh Allen sitting on the bench seemed as unsatisfactory as deciding the FIFA World Cup on penalty kicks.

However, that rush to judgement had the same value as the first draft of an angry email that is better left unsent. There had to be a reason the owners have not changed the rule even though it has been raised after other similar situations, the most memorable being the Kansas City Chiefs, last night’s beneficiaries, having been victimized in the same manner by Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the 2019 AFC championship game. Surely one of the many pundits on ESPN or the NFL Network would make the case for maintaining the status quo.

Much of the analysis focused on the need for an overtime rather than the extra period itself. If only one of the two teams had played defense any time in the fourth quarter. Or the choice by Bills coach Sean McDermott not to put the final kick0ff in play to consume a few of the precious 13 seconds still on the clock.

When it came to the overtime rules themselves, advocates pointed to the fact there are 11 players on both sides of the ball. ESPN’s Michael Wilbon put it most distinctly, “When you lose the coin toss, go out there, play some damn defense and get the ball back for your offense.” But the more I thought about it, there are two other reasons to support the current rule which seemed to escape those who make their living parsing sporting events.

First, if the Bills had a chance to go on offense following the Chief’s opening OT touchdown, the outcome would not have changed. Both teams were scoring at will as evidenced by four lead changes and a tie in the last two minutes of regulation play. Yes, Allen most likely would have steered the Bills downfield and tied the game at 43-43. But does anyone really believe Patrick Mahomes, facing a winded Bills defense, would not have put the Chiefs in position to kick the winning field on the next series?

But the second reason may be the most important. Facing a seven point deficit, the trailing team is given an advantage counter to the dynamics of play under most other conditions. From the time their offense takes the field, they are given one additional opportunity to make each first down. The coach does not have to decide if he is going to punt or kick a field goal on fourth down. He is going to call a play whether it is fourth and one yard or fourth and 20. In contrast, the team that wins the coin toss does not have that luxury. For them, fourth down requires a decision. Can their defense hold the opponent if they punt or kick a field goal? Do they risk a fourth and short in their own territory if they doubt their defense will give them a second chance at victory? They are bound by the tactical decisions on which games are usually decided. Decisions that make Monday morning quarterbacking a sport in its own right.

Like most sports these days, football has evolved into a contest based on specializations. The days when participants play on both sides of the ball are a distant memory. Linemen are rotated depending on the situation. Teams like the New Orleans Saints have tested the concept of revolving quarterbacks. Special teams now have different punters and place kickers. For field goals, the regular center is replaced by a long snapper.

Keep the rule and let the coaches and players adapt to the situation. Maybe you develop a special OT defense with a different lineup. Just imagine the commentary this morning if McDermott had brought in his OT defense and stopped the previously unstoppable Mahomes with an innovative formation or pass coverage. No one would be calling for a rule change.

To do anything otherwise puts too much importance on the coin versus the players or the game. In the scene from which the opening quote is drawn, Anton Chugihr (Javier Bardem) tells a gas attendant, who is unaware Bardem’s character is a psychopathic murderer, to call the flip of a quarter. Not sure what is at stake, he chooses “HEADS” to which Chugihr looks at the coin and says, “Well done.” As he gets ready to leave the gas station, they have the following exchange.

Chugihr: Don’t put it in your pocket. It’s you lucky quarter.

Attendant: Where do you want me to put it?

Chugihr: Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it’ll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. [Long pause.] Which it is!

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

If you think participation awards are only for youth sports, think again. This year there are 44 college bowl games including the playoff games. And with 125 Division-1 schools, approximately two-thirds of all college programs had their seasons extended one more month.

You know the arguments. On the negative side:

These shiny bits of plastic have been blamed for creating an entitled generation who learned to expect adulation for the unexceptional on the playing field and later in life.

Lisa Heffernan, today.com, august 2015

On the positive side:

A participation trophy can be a symbol of the effort and time a person put into an endeavor or it can serve as a reminder or memento for a sport or activity. 

 Jordon Roos and Brad Strand, physcial and health education america, October 2021

As I tuned into what seemed like a 24/7 parade of bowl contests on ESPN, I wondered, “How valuable is a memento of a 6-6 team playing another 6-6 team in a stadium with more empty seats than a Milli Vanilli reunion concert?” Or as was the case at today’s TaxSlayer Bowl (aka Gator Bowl) in Jacksonville, 10-3 Wake Forest scrimmaged with 5-7 Rutgers (aka Texas A&M), and even students and alumni from the competing schools were few and far between.

Once again the run-up to bowl season was more exciting than the games themselves. Who will play whom? Where will they play? Who will get snubbed? It reminded me of Lewis Black’s 2008 comedy tour, appropriately titled, “Anticipation.” He opens as follows:

This moment, which we are sharing together right now, I promise you, is as good as it is going to get. So, I think we should quit while we’re ahead. It’s been great. Let’s leave well enough alone. There is no moment better than this moment when we are anticipating the actual moment itself.

Lewis black, Anticipation, 2008

How do you make the best moment when it comes to college bowls even better? On the Sunday following the conference championship games, have Oprah Winfrey host the televised bowl selection program. I can hear her now as she points to the coaches in the audience. “You get a bowl bid! You get a bowl bid! Everyone gets a bowl bid!”

Best wishes for a happy, HEALTHY and rewarding 2022.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Iowa has never hosted a Major League Baseball game, which is strange, because for so many people, Iowa cornfields have come to represent a place where the game can be played as it used to be, as it should be.

~Chelsea Janes/Washington Post

Much is being written about last night’s “Field of Dreams Game” between the Yankees and White Sox in Dyersville, Iowa, location for the 1989 film based on William Patrick Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe.   Major League Baseball (MLB) described it on Twitter as, “What a night!! Baseball remains the best!”  The New York Times touted the event as “packed full of nostalgia.”

Unfortunately, for me, someone who has two personal connections to the film and its location, last night was anything but a dream.  It was a nightmare akin to the “upside down” alternate universe in “Stranger Things.”

The first occasion on which “Field of Dreams” came alive for me was during a driving vacation when our family made a detour to Dyersville.  The three of us made our own version of the classic film.  We walked out of the corn into right field.  My daughter and I had “a catch.”  We did the wave on the three-tiered bench along the first base line a la Kevin Kosner, James Earl Jones, Amy Madigan and Gaby Hoffman.  And through the magic of stop action, duplicated the scene where a young “Moonlight” Graham crosses the base path and becomes Dr. Graham, except young and old Archibald Graham were played by my daughter and wife instead of Frank Whaley and Burt Lancaster, respectively.

The second occasion was an opportunity to discuss a pivotal moment in the movie with James Earl Jones.  When Ray Kinsella (Kosner) drops Terrence Mann (Jones) at his Boston apartment following a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, Mann makes a hand gesture as he says goodbye.  Always interested in the origin of these small but powerful cinematic moments, I asked Jones had he come up with the idea.  Or was it in the script?  He told me he adlibbed that little piece of business drawing on the body language used by casino croupiers to signal, “The hand is over.”

What I saw when I switched to the game was not the Field of Dreams I knew.  If MLB and Fox really wanted to pay homage to baseball as it is presented in both the movie and book, all they had to do was read the script.  For example, listen to what led a young Archibald Graham to hitchhike on a rural roadside where he is picked up by Kinsella and Mann.

I play baseball.  I’m looking for a place to play.  I heard that all through the Midwest, they have towns with teams.  And in some places, they’ll even find you a day job.

Or Mann’s climatic explanation of baseball as the national pastime.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.  America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.  It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.  But baseball has marked the time.  This field, this game.  It’s a part of our past, Ray.  It reminds us of all that once was good…and it could be again.

“Field of Dreams” is the story of a long ago game captured by Roger Kahn in The Boys of Summer or Doris Kearns Goodwin in Wait Till Next Year or George F. Will in Boys at Work.  It is the saga of a struggling graduate student who would walk to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and pay 85 cents for a bleacher seat or who picked up a $10 ticket to game six of the 1971 World Series.

In no way did last night have any connection to those youthful memories.  The “characters” on the field have individual salaries that dwarf the total payrolls of all the teams combined when Joe Jackson took to the outfield in Comiskey Park.  And a fan needed to be equally well off as tickets ranged from $375 to $1,210 per seat retail with many being resold online for more than $4,000.

Nor was the game played on the original field.  Instead it was “staged” in a temporary 8,000 seat stadium complete with digital scoreboard, a jumbotron and advertisements projected on green screens around the ballpark.  MLB and corporate media had produced the perfect metaphor for modern day America.  Billionaire owners and multi-millionaire players entertaining rich fans who paid more for an evening of faux nostalgia than the monthly take home pay of the average household.  A far cry from Archie Graham’s “they’ll even find you a day job.”

Instead of a one-off regular game in a neutral location, MLB missed a golden opportunity to honor its past.  Imagine two teams, made up of current inductees in the Baseball Hall of Fame, taking the field like “ghosts” of a past era.  And fans standing or sitting on beach chairs along the baselines, sipping lemonade served from the porch of the “Kinsella home.”  On the day my family arrived at the field, there was a pick-up game.  The score did not matter.  The sights and sounds on the field let you know there was magic in the air.  When Terrence Mann tells Kinsella, “People will come, Ray.  People will definitely come,” that is what he envisioned.

One more thing. If Fox Sports really wanted to honor the underlying theme of the film, Ray Kinsella’s relationship with his father John over Joe Jackson’s role in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, they would have had Barry Bonds, Pete Rose and Alex Rodriguez in the broadcast booth.   That would have represented “the one true constant” associated with baseball, athletes putting themselves before team and willing to bend or break the rules to win at all costs.  Come to think of it, that would have been a perfect metaphor for America in 2021.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Question du jour:  Can someone become a grandpa in attitude and behavior without actually having grandchildren?

Answer du jour:  Absolutely!

Case in point, the 2020 (aka 2021) Tokyo Olympics.  Before I begin to rant, this is not about any of the following:

• Whether the games should have been held in COVID-rich Japan?
• Donald Trump and other members of his cult rooting against American athletes.
• Simone Biles’ “twisties.”
• The delayed broadcast of events for which outcomes were already known due to the time difference between Florida and Tokyo.

It is not even about my perennial bias against many Olympic events, i.e. if you cannot time, measure or keep score of an event, it is not a sport.  That is not to say I do not admire the talent and devotion  to their craft of gymnasts, divers and ice skaters.  They are athletes par excellence by definition.  “Persons who are proficient in sports and other physical exercise.” (Dictionary.COM)  This explains why I would stay up until 3:00 am to watch the final round of men’s golf or get up at 4:00 am to watch the women’s soccer team.  But would rather binge watch “Ted Lasso” every night rather than NBC’s Olympic coverage of rhythmic gymnastics, skate boarding or BMX freestyle.

My rant about this quadrennial version of the world coming together to celebrate athletic achievement focuses on the adage, “More is less.”  Oh, for the days of the first Olympiad in 1896 when there were nine contested sports–Artistic Gymnastics, Athletics, Cycling (Road & Track), Fencing, Shooting, Swimming, Tennis, Weightlifting, Greco-Roman Wrestling.  With the exception of “artistic gymnastics,” all met my personal definition of sports.  But even then gymnastics were described as “art” which trained experts can judge but the ultimate value resides “in the eye of beholder.”

This past fortnight, there were 339 medal events in 33 categories.  Therefore, the prime time, network coverage proved to be a highlights film, jumping from one event to another.  If you wanted to focus on any particular sport or event, you had to be the equivalent of an NSA analyst to decode its time and location.  Consider NBC’s own answer to the question, “How do I watch the Olympics on TV?”

NBC is home to the Olympics and USA, CNBC, NBCSN, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA and GOLF Channel will also air coverage of the Tokyo Games. Check your local listings here. For live streaming options, events will air on NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app and Peacock.

I do  not have the ultimate solution, but let me suggest the following as a good start.

• In two current Olympic sports, golf and tennis, “the world comes together to celebrate athletic achievement” almost every week.  Both have major championships for men and women.  Golf even dubs four of its annual premiere tournaments as “WORLD Golf Championships.”
• Television and corporate sponsors created something called “The X-Games” specifically to display artistic skills not previously covered at the Olympics or lacked existing world class circuits.  These events have grown in international stature and participation.
• Some team sports already have major international competitions, most notably men’s and women’s soccer.  World-class players whose “day job” depends on salary offers rather than nationality have a chance to play for their country every four years in the World Cup.  In contrast, basketball, baseball and softball professional competition is mostly limited to national or regional boundaries which makes the global Olympic version unique.
• Do not give the host country discretion to add new events.  At France’s request, break dancing will makes its entry into Olympic competition.  This addition, among others, was approved by the IOC, in it’s own words, “to make the Olympic Games more urban, more youthful and more female.”  Is the IOC blind to the increase in diversity among athletes in more traditional Olympic events?
• Focus on sports that have minimal exposure outside of the Olympic games and celebrate the heritage of 124 years of history.  Elevate the importance of events for which the Olympics is THE major international competition for a sport.

Maybe, none of this matters.  The sustainability of an international competition of this scope may be more a question of economics.  Every recent host city of the summer games has dealt with major cost overruns which make the event a money loser and less desirable.  On July 21, the IOC awarded the 2032 summer Olympics to Brisbane, Australia, not a huge surprise since Brisbane was the sole bidder.  Will the day come when there are zero applicants for the “honor” of subsidizing the games with taxpayer money.

Likewise, the economics are dependent on lucrative contracts for the television rights.  In 2011, NBC paid $12 billion for the U.S. broadcast rights through 2034, money that is recouped from advertisers who may pay as much as $200 million for advertising packages running up to and including the games themselves.

However, a steep drop in average prime time viewers from 29 million for the 2016 Rio games to 16.8 million this year could dampen advertiser enthusiasm in the future.  The New York Times reports, “NBCUniversal has offered to make up for the smaller than expected television audience by offering free ads to some companies that bought commercial time during the games.”  NBC is betting the drop in viewership was due mostly to the impacts of COVID on the spectacle nature of the games, especially the opening and closing ceremonies, and the 13 hour time difference between Tokyo and the east coast of the United States.  The network anticipates a major rebound, especially in 2028 when Los Angeles will be the host city.

Yet, it is anything but a sure bet. Suggestions for future games include paring down the number of events or spreading them across several locations with existing facilities to alleviate major construction costs.  Any option will be a balancing act of Herculean proportions, requiring the talent and preparation of an Olympic athlete.

This “honorary grandpa” wishes them good luck.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP