The Penalty Box: Ranking makes me feel rank
January 20, 2021 at 2:57 a.m.
The Penalty Box: Ranking makes me feel rank
By Roger Grossman-
I love talking on the radio, I love dispensing information on the radio and I have enjoyed the limited local celebrity that has come with doing it for a long time here.
That also makes me a member of “the media”. I realize by bringing that to your attention just now, some of you will never look at me the same way again.
I get that.
But I like to think that the difference between me (and other local media people) and the big city or national media members is that I/we are accountable to our consumers. If I do something or say something wrong, it won’t take long for someone to make it known to me. I am easy to find and easy to get ahold of this time of year. And that’s a good thing. I think I can speak for the radio stations and the Times Union in saying that we really do want to get stuff right.
I say all that because I have a real beef with members of the national media, who I believe have taken one of the most fun things about sports and ruined it beyond repair.
Debate.
We in the sports media have to rank everything and everyone. We rank things for their greatness and for their badness.
We really saw this fact driven home four years ago when Cleveland beat Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs by almost 50 points in Game #2 in Boston.
This result fanned the flame of the debate of “who is the greatest of all time, LeBron James or Michael Jordan”.
This article will not discuss this for two reasons: 1) because Game #3 of the series answered the question (James scored 11 points, 0 in the fourth quarter) offered after Game #2, and 2) because the argument never gets you to the real answer.
These debates cover all sports, and include Brady vs. Manning, Gibson vs Koufax…you get the point. And those debates are fun to have! Intense computer-generated statistical analysis have really thrown the proverbial can of gas into the fire of discussion. Which, in theory, should make the debates more fun and certainly should help all parties in all debates reach a final resolution.
And THAT, my friends, is the real problem.
Part of the fun of sports debate is that your opinion is just that, your opinion. Back in the good ole’ days there was almost no real chance of the participating parties agreeing that one of them was wrong and the other was clearly right. You didn’t have to. Debating sports was fun then, and the fun of it was that two people could sit over cold drinks and watch a game or watch the day float by and have their discussion with passion and fervor and then pat each other on the shoulder when one of them had to leave--the matter still unsettled.
Now, we rank things.
Who is the best (insert whatever you want here) of all time?
Great…debate the 1970’s Steelers against the 1980’s 49’ers. Love it.
Now, we have to rank things like “who is better at throwing deep passes, Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes?” So you start down this road with someone and it becomes like DNA evidence in a murder trial—it’s critical to the argument but it runs the risk of lulling the jury to sleep if it takes too long to wade through.
And in doing this, we are put in the position to make a choice necessary. Who is the best (insert whatever you want here again) in the league, of all time, in a division of their league? Well, what if both are really good? Does it really matter who is better if they both are ‘top-shelf’ performers? No, of course not!
But because saying “both guys/teams” etc. are elite”, we get labeled as weak.
Truth is, the path sports debate has taken now forces us to belittle one side for the purpose of making the case for the other. Who likes THAT? Not me. Count me in the group of humans who is completely and totally turned off by negative campaigning.
Even worse than that is when the debate flips upside down and sports (and news people too) start debating “which is worse”. This was an actual tease to an upcoming ‘ranking’ segment on a sports radio show: “coming up, if you are a college football coach would you rather have someone accused of domestic violence on your team, or someone who’s been caught using Performance Enhancing Drugs”.
Seriously…it happened. I was listening and almost drove into a tree.
I had to stay with it to see where it went, and one host said he would much prefer PED users because of the violent nature of the other.
Here is a concept to consider…THEY ARE BOTH BAD! But we can’t rank them when you take that approach, right? So we have to be able to quantify them and then put them in their specific place.
It’s just a waste of time, and that basically is what it is used for—to fill time until we come up with someone better to talk about.
I’m done for the week. I’d say this was my fifth best column this year, but I am not interested in debating that with you because you would no-doubt be wrong.
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I love talking on the radio, I love dispensing information on the radio and I have enjoyed the limited local celebrity that has come with doing it for a long time here.
That also makes me a member of “the media”. I realize by bringing that to your attention just now, some of you will never look at me the same way again.
I get that.
But I like to think that the difference between me (and other local media people) and the big city or national media members is that I/we are accountable to our consumers. If I do something or say something wrong, it won’t take long for someone to make it known to me. I am easy to find and easy to get ahold of this time of year. And that’s a good thing. I think I can speak for the radio stations and the Times Union in saying that we really do want to get stuff right.
I say all that because I have a real beef with members of the national media, who I believe have taken one of the most fun things about sports and ruined it beyond repair.
Debate.
We in the sports media have to rank everything and everyone. We rank things for their greatness and for their badness.
We really saw this fact driven home four years ago when Cleveland beat Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs by almost 50 points in Game #2 in Boston.
This result fanned the flame of the debate of “who is the greatest of all time, LeBron James or Michael Jordan”.
This article will not discuss this for two reasons: 1) because Game #3 of the series answered the question (James scored 11 points, 0 in the fourth quarter) offered after Game #2, and 2) because the argument never gets you to the real answer.
These debates cover all sports, and include Brady vs. Manning, Gibson vs Koufax…you get the point. And those debates are fun to have! Intense computer-generated statistical analysis have really thrown the proverbial can of gas into the fire of discussion. Which, in theory, should make the debates more fun and certainly should help all parties in all debates reach a final resolution.
And THAT, my friends, is the real problem.
Part of the fun of sports debate is that your opinion is just that, your opinion. Back in the good ole’ days there was almost no real chance of the participating parties agreeing that one of them was wrong and the other was clearly right. You didn’t have to. Debating sports was fun then, and the fun of it was that two people could sit over cold drinks and watch a game or watch the day float by and have their discussion with passion and fervor and then pat each other on the shoulder when one of them had to leave--the matter still unsettled.
Now, we rank things.
Who is the best (insert whatever you want here) of all time?
Great…debate the 1970’s Steelers against the 1980’s 49’ers. Love it.
Now, we have to rank things like “who is better at throwing deep passes, Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes?” So you start down this road with someone and it becomes like DNA evidence in a murder trial—it’s critical to the argument but it runs the risk of lulling the jury to sleep if it takes too long to wade through.
And in doing this, we are put in the position to make a choice necessary. Who is the best (insert whatever you want here again) in the league, of all time, in a division of their league? Well, what if both are really good? Does it really matter who is better if they both are ‘top-shelf’ performers? No, of course not!
But because saying “both guys/teams” etc. are elite”, we get labeled as weak.
Truth is, the path sports debate has taken now forces us to belittle one side for the purpose of making the case for the other. Who likes THAT? Not me. Count me in the group of humans who is completely and totally turned off by negative campaigning.
Even worse than that is when the debate flips upside down and sports (and news people too) start debating “which is worse”. This was an actual tease to an upcoming ‘ranking’ segment on a sports radio show: “coming up, if you are a college football coach would you rather have someone accused of domestic violence on your team, or someone who’s been caught using Performance Enhancing Drugs”.
Seriously…it happened. I was listening and almost drove into a tree.
I had to stay with it to see where it went, and one host said he would much prefer PED users because of the violent nature of the other.
Here is a concept to consider…THEY ARE BOTH BAD! But we can’t rank them when you take that approach, right? So we have to be able to quantify them and then put them in their specific place.
It’s just a waste of time, and that basically is what it is used for—to fill time until we come up with someone better to talk about.
I’m done for the week. I’d say this was my fifth best column this year, but I am not interested in debating that with you because you would no-doubt be wrong.
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