Consistency In Sports Is Diminishing
September 15, 2016 at 4:31 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
I heard a coach whose team played a little better than expected say “we just need to be more consistent.” He means he wants his team to play like that all of the time, or at least more often.
But as I thought about his statement of hope for the future of his team, I asked the question “how possible is it for true consistency to be achieved?”
If every day is different, and every opponent game-plans against you differently, how is a consistent outcome possible? In the current sports society, only the New England Patriots in the NFL can be counted on to win on a regular basis … and we assume they have found a new way to cheat to do it.
Teams that play against each other in the regular season might meet again in the postseason, and often the outcome is reversed. It’s why we love sports! We just don’t know what is going to happen from one game to the next. We celebrate that.
But then, well, it was late and I started to think about inconsistencies in sports. Things that don’t add up or jive with other things.
For example:
• The foul line and foul pole in baseball. They are described as “foul” but if the ball hits them they are in fair territory. So what’s up with that? They should be called the “fair line” and the “fair pole”.
• Home plate. Baseball’s ultimate goal neither looks like anything you would eat from, nor is it actually a final destination. When a runner safely reaches home plate in baseball, he doesn’t just stand there. He still has to go to the dugout.
• Tennis scoring. How is it possible that the most important emotion we have as human beings – love – means the same thing as doing absolutely nothing in tennis? And when you do score, the first two points are worth 15 points each, but the third is only worth 10. Why? It should be 0, 15, 30, 45, game over.
• Free throws. The place where a free throw is shot is often called the charity stripe. Charity is something that is given to you by someone else when you need it and can’t get it for yourself. OK, but when a guy drives down the lane and gets his head bashed in by a guy 70 pounds heavier and six inches taller than he is, doesn’t he earn those free throws? It is demeaning to the offended party to say his free throws are an act of kindness granted by someone else. In fact, the official who called the foul that led to the free throws should be offended by the thought that the shooter is only at the line because he or she said so.
• College conference names. As someone who has lived in northern Indiana my whole life, I am partial to Big Ten sports. But check the two divisions of the conference and add them up and you get 14. The Big Ten has 14 teams in it. I know they teach math differently these days, but 10 is not the same as 14.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) includes Louisiana State, Missouri and Texas A&M, who would not be in the southeastern part of the country at all. Heck, Warsaw is farther east than any of those schools.
And then of course there is The Atlantic 10 Conference, which includes St. Louis and Dayton – neither of which is anywhere near the Atlantic seaboard. And the Pacific 12 Conference has added Utah and Colorado, and I am pretty sure that they are nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.
Those are just a few that came to mind right away. I’d put more of them into this article, but my brain is just as inconsistent as the sports I cover.
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I heard a coach whose team played a little better than expected say “we just need to be more consistent.” He means he wants his team to play like that all of the time, or at least more often.
But as I thought about his statement of hope for the future of his team, I asked the question “how possible is it for true consistency to be achieved?”
If every day is different, and every opponent game-plans against you differently, how is a consistent outcome possible? In the current sports society, only the New England Patriots in the NFL can be counted on to win on a regular basis … and we assume they have found a new way to cheat to do it.
Teams that play against each other in the regular season might meet again in the postseason, and often the outcome is reversed. It’s why we love sports! We just don’t know what is going to happen from one game to the next. We celebrate that.
But then, well, it was late and I started to think about inconsistencies in sports. Things that don’t add up or jive with other things.
For example:
• The foul line and foul pole in baseball. They are described as “foul” but if the ball hits them they are in fair territory. So what’s up with that? They should be called the “fair line” and the “fair pole”.
• Home plate. Baseball’s ultimate goal neither looks like anything you would eat from, nor is it actually a final destination. When a runner safely reaches home plate in baseball, he doesn’t just stand there. He still has to go to the dugout.
• Tennis scoring. How is it possible that the most important emotion we have as human beings – love – means the same thing as doing absolutely nothing in tennis? And when you do score, the first two points are worth 15 points each, but the third is only worth 10. Why? It should be 0, 15, 30, 45, game over.
• Free throws. The place where a free throw is shot is often called the charity stripe. Charity is something that is given to you by someone else when you need it and can’t get it for yourself. OK, but when a guy drives down the lane and gets his head bashed in by a guy 70 pounds heavier and six inches taller than he is, doesn’t he earn those free throws? It is demeaning to the offended party to say his free throws are an act of kindness granted by someone else. In fact, the official who called the foul that led to the free throws should be offended by the thought that the shooter is only at the line because he or she said so.
• College conference names. As someone who has lived in northern Indiana my whole life, I am partial to Big Ten sports. But check the two divisions of the conference and add them up and you get 14. The Big Ten has 14 teams in it. I know they teach math differently these days, but 10 is not the same as 14.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) includes Louisiana State, Missouri and Texas A&M, who would not be in the southeastern part of the country at all. Heck, Warsaw is farther east than any of those schools.
And then of course there is The Atlantic 10 Conference, which includes St. Louis and Dayton – neither of which is anywhere near the Atlantic seaboard. And the Pacific 12 Conference has added Utah and Colorado, and I am pretty sure that they are nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.
Those are just a few that came to mind right away. I’d put more of them into this article, but my brain is just as inconsistent as the sports I cover.
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