Chelsea 1-1 Man City
Yes, Americans, this was not just larger than the Super Bowl, it was five times larger, with an estimated 650 million people around the world tuning in, and this for a midseason game. I rooted for Manchester City out of a residual affection for Oasis, who are City fans from way back, and also because of contempt for all things Mourinho. But it's hard not to notice that neither of these teams is lovable, both in the top two only because they are owned by massive parent companies from politically dubious parts of the world and thus able to outspend everyone else in the world this side of Real Madrid or Barcelona.
Despite this, it was not remotely interesting as a game. Jose Mourinho is famously unconcerned with midfield play as a pioneer of the defense-centric, counterattacking style that is now all over the Premiership and much of the world (Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid have also had much success with this method). So there's a lot of strong individual play with the creativity that comes from employing the world's best, but very little of it leads to anything. It's not quite bad football, but it's more like watching Hull and Newcastle than it probably should be. An analogy: it is not unlike NBA basketball when the Knicks were riding high in the 90s--the individual play can almost distract one from the fact that the team can only win ugly.
Not Watching the Super Bowl
As far back as I can remember, I have watched the Super Bowl. I may have been uninterested in anything else having to do with the NFL, but I still watched. Not yesterday, though, and unlikely ever again, after the year the NFL has had. Sports are a bit stupid in the best of cases (though stupid things can be enjoyable and even transcendent from time to time), and one has to reckon with the fact that anything done by humans will also be done by some morally questionable humans, but there comes a point at which the evidence amasses beyond a point that one can continue to associate oneself with it. FIFA may be cartoonishly venal and willing to associate with the worst people--see the slave labor being used to allow Qatar to build stadia to host the World Cup--but if Cristiano Ronaldo got in trouble with the law, no one would be bending over backwards to save him, and certainly not in the manner that the NFL and its teams routinely interfere with law enforcement investigations, usually by already having someone in the police department on team payroll. The Shield very clearly thinks it can have whatever it wants, and for the most part this view seems to be correct. I would rather not have anything to do with it.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
Showing posts with label obligatory periodic post about sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obligatory periodic post about sports. Show all posts
2.2.15
30.1.15
A Little Aside About Sports and the Limits of Statistical Analysis
This sort of thing drives me crazy. After a very careful analysis of the math and statistics involved in judging whether or not the Patriots cheated by under-inflating their footballs, an analysis that talks about the available data, properly constructing the pool of data to be used, and finding the right measures for that data, the result is what it usually is: there's some evidence that might be suggestive of something, but no obvious conclusions to be drawn. The piece then draws some obvious conclusions:
A bunch of non-statistical pieces of evidence are mentioned but not discussed. It could be a matter of space. It could be a oddly-worded suggestion for Bayesian updating--no individual piece of evidence is sufficient, but each should increment you toward believing one possibility over the other. But it seems like all of these should get more attention, not less, precisely because the statistical results were inconclusive. Past Patriots transgressions, for example, would only count if you had a theory which suggested that, having been busted for cheating, the Patriots would turn around and select a new means of cheating which no one talked about for nine years. But when one puts it that way, it seems like an uncertain candidate for updating one's prior beliefs, since it is related to one's underlying beliefs about the situation, and people don't think about the many possible factors that might lead to either continuity or change. Like the data, it's not a simple matter.
I like statistics in sports like football and soccer specifically because they contain individual elements that are harder to measure in abstraction from everything else. Statistics here are a way of gaining entry into seeing specific parts of the game that might otherwise go unnoticed. Nobody claims them to capture everything that's important: any analysis has to be supplemented with many others. Soccer has many moments like this Harry Kane goal against Chelsea. The play works only because a player who never touches the ball runs himself out of the play before it even begins, and by doing so takes the key defenders out of the play. How does one measure that? (I sometimes think the popularity of Total Football amongst the stats-friendly has to do with the fact that it correlates lots of objective measures to winning: time of possession, passes completed, tackles, takeaways, fouls, etc)
The answer, of course, here as in Deflater-mess, as in every other type of data analysis, is that smart observers know when to use stats and when (and how) to use and judge other types of evidence and data.
You judge a theory based on all the evidence you have for it: past Patriots’ transgressions, the pressure gap between the home and visitor game balls in last week’s AFC championship, your personal feelings about Bill Belichick’s moral foundations, and so on. The Patriots’ sudden improvement in preventing fumbles doesn’t close the case against them, but it’s one more piece of evidence.
A bunch of non-statistical pieces of evidence are mentioned but not discussed. It could be a matter of space. It could be a oddly-worded suggestion for Bayesian updating--no individual piece of evidence is sufficient, but each should increment you toward believing one possibility over the other. But it seems like all of these should get more attention, not less, precisely because the statistical results were inconclusive. Past Patriots transgressions, for example, would only count if you had a theory which suggested that, having been busted for cheating, the Patriots would turn around and select a new means of cheating which no one talked about for nine years. But when one puts it that way, it seems like an uncertain candidate for updating one's prior beliefs, since it is related to one's underlying beliefs about the situation, and people don't think about the many possible factors that might lead to either continuity or change. Like the data, it's not a simple matter.
I like statistics in sports like football and soccer specifically because they contain individual elements that are harder to measure in abstraction from everything else. Statistics here are a way of gaining entry into seeing specific parts of the game that might otherwise go unnoticed. Nobody claims them to capture everything that's important: any analysis has to be supplemented with many others. Soccer has many moments like this Harry Kane goal against Chelsea. The play works only because a player who never touches the ball runs himself out of the play before it even begins, and by doing so takes the key defenders out of the play. How does one measure that? (I sometimes think the popularity of Total Football amongst the stats-friendly has to do with the fact that it correlates lots of objective measures to winning: time of possession, passes completed, tackles, takeaways, fouls, etc)
The answer, of course, here as in Deflater-mess, as in every other type of data analysis, is that smart observers know when to use stats and when (and how) to use and judge other types of evidence and data.
19.1.15
Figuring Out the Premier League, An Ongoing Series
QPR 0-2 Manchester United
Man U won, but unconvincingly. One of the interesting things about picking up a new sport is attempting to sort out the phenomena other people take for granted. United looked terrible; City lost to Arsenal; I've watched Chelsea and Tottenham and City all drop points to teams that are in danger of relegation. Why?
United kept losing the ball in midfield; QPR seemed to particularly enjoy messing with Wayne Rooney (an old man at 29! There's sports for you). This appears to be the key: the Premier League is mostly about 'parking the bus,' putting 8-10 men in and around the penalty area in an attempt to stop goals. The primary offensive strategy, such as it is, is the quick counter-attack after a missed chance on the defensive end. No one has much talent in creating shots from midfield (aside from Karim Benzema, but that's why he's great); if there's no score on a break, you end up watching highly-paid strikers stand around waiting for someone to miss a shot so that they can scramble. That's the Plan B for most teams. It makes sense, in a way: if you have a massive, or substantial, talent gap, passing the ball around waiting for the other team to make a defensive mistake is a solid strategy. Man U won, after all.
But it's not a great strategy. Because these teams are lazy in the middle third, any team committed to high pressing has a good chance to score on their own break: QPR had three or four good chances go wasted. Combine that with a natural inclination towards conservatism on the road, and it only takes a lucky chance or two to lose. Talent will out, but it looks like a poor tactical decision.
Man U won, but unconvincingly. One of the interesting things about picking up a new sport is attempting to sort out the phenomena other people take for granted. United looked terrible; City lost to Arsenal; I've watched Chelsea and Tottenham and City all drop points to teams that are in danger of relegation. Why?
United kept losing the ball in midfield; QPR seemed to particularly enjoy messing with Wayne Rooney (an old man at 29! There's sports for you). This appears to be the key: the Premier League is mostly about 'parking the bus,' putting 8-10 men in and around the penalty area in an attempt to stop goals. The primary offensive strategy, such as it is, is the quick counter-attack after a missed chance on the defensive end. No one has much talent in creating shots from midfield (aside from Karim Benzema, but that's why he's great); if there's no score on a break, you end up watching highly-paid strikers stand around waiting for someone to miss a shot so that they can scramble. That's the Plan B for most teams. It makes sense, in a way: if you have a massive, or substantial, talent gap, passing the ball around waiting for the other team to make a defensive mistake is a solid strategy. Man U won, after all.
But it's not a great strategy. Because these teams are lazy in the middle third, any team committed to high pressing has a good chance to score on their own break: QPR had three or four good chances go wasted. Combine that with a natural inclination towards conservatism on the road, and it only takes a lucky chance or two to lose. Talent will out, but it looks like a poor tactical decision.
13.1.15
Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Crystal Palace
I'm new to club football, but I've been under the impression that teams that are in contention for Champions League (ie the top four teams in the Premiership) should not be losing to teams that are in danger of being relegated. I'm also not a person to complain about the quality of refereeing, but it left much to be desired in this match--though both sides benefitted from questionable calls. There's not much to say except Spurs still look to be playing like a team, particularly with inspired midfield play, and Harry Kane can do whatever he wants, still. And this is still without the addition of DeAndre Yedlin, who is playing for the under-21 team at the moment and is expected to join the first team once he's match fit. The game was, in its own way, the platonic opposite of a Michigan loss--one that I was pretty content to watch through to the end.
Chelsea 2-0 Newcastle, watched until Chelsea went up 2-0
Chelsea may have won, but they certainly didn't look the better team for most of the match, which is not the result you're looking for when playing against a team whose manager quit in disgust midweek. Jose Mourinho schadenfreude meter: moderate.
Ohio State, national champions
Two things to note:
1. People who talk about Urban Meyer's "new dynasty" should probably remember how long the old one lasted: 2005-2008
2. Ohio State coaches are only ever fired (Earle Bruce, John Cooper) or resign in disgrace (Woody "punched a player" Hayes, Jim "people can get records of my email?" Tressel). Which one will Meyer be?
6.1.15
Jim Harbaugh to Michigan
Fulfilling Michigan's own most inflated conception of itself: an alumnus who has enjoyed incredible professional success leaves what is widely considered to be the peak of his field to return to his alma mater for less money than he would have gotten elsewhere. The hiring rather changes the narrative about Michigan and its success in creating football coaches: there is every reason to believe that Harbaugh and LSU's Les Miles would have accepted any serious offer from Michigan to return home, possibly any offer, period.
The hiring also exposed (again) the significant different between college sports fans, professional sports fans, and those uninterested in sports. Michigan creates tremendous alumni loyalty by making itself into a distinct identity in spite of the large number of students, and the football team is one of the most important parts of that identity. I love living in North Carolina, and cannot really picture leaving, but for a good job offer in Ann Arbor, I might well do so.
The hiring also exposed (again) the significant different between college sports fans, professional sports fans, and those uninterested in sports. Michigan creates tremendous alumni loyalty by making itself into a distinct identity in spite of the large number of students, and the football team is one of the most important parts of that identity. I love living in North Carolina, and cannot really picture leaving, but for a good job offer in Ann Arbor, I might well do so.
FC Barcelona 0-1 Real Sociedad
I watched through the Jordi Alba own goal, and then realized the same thing all the other Barça fans had realized: this team is a mess, and it's the manager's fault. Desperation is built in to football: all the games count and all the goals count because one can never quite predict what the rest of the league will do, and this accounts for the tension that ratchets itself up throughout every game that's not Brazil-Germany at the past World Cup. Desperation that shows up earlier than that, earlier than, say, the 60th minute, is bad. Luis Enrique put out a bad starting XI, mismatched in such a way that all the needed players could not be added later, they made one mistake early on, and every move after that reeked of panic. Add to this the increasingly loud reports that Enrique is fighting with Messi and Neymar--and that their benching was a punishment for questioning his authority--and everything looks a mess.
Tottenham Hotspur 5-3 Chelsea
The flip side of Barça is Spurs, who are coming together at the right moment. Sports is about schadenfreude as much as loyalty to one's team, and in the Premier League there is no joy to be had that surpasses Chelsea losing, except perhaps the attendant thrill of Jose Mourinho losing. When it's your team that does it, it's even better. Spurs always lose to Chelsea, pulling a win in four or five of the last 40 meetings. Nor was it a fluke: Spurs were the better team, building the attack through strong midfield play (I even saw some tiki-taka make an appearance as they drew Chelsea out of defensive shape), and Harry Kane continued to prove that he can do whatever he wants. There's a plan, the team is excited, and they're rounding into form at just the right time.
16.12.14
Decline of an Empire
Getafe 0-0 FC Barcelona
The thing about great teams, much like great writers, is that it can be hard to learn from them because they are not making the mistakes that allow for learning. It's quite possible to read something great and learn no lessons about how it was successfully constructed; it's just as possible that the personal creative processes hit a peak for that author in that one period of composition, and will never be matched. When you read something that goes wrong in a noticeable but minor way, it's much easier to see the flaw and imagine how one might go about fixing it.
I am still only learning how to watch football: the moments of chaos give way to patches where I am able to understand and follow both what is happening and why. This is good for increasing my technical vocabulary and very bad for being a fan; I can read the tactical review of a match and its impressions now sync with mine. Barcelona now features weird tactical decisions so notable that even I can recognize the flaws: "why are they only attacking on the left, even though the starting striker on that side is out?" "why is Messi playing like a midfielder?" "why is it the backs are the only ones who ever have the ball in possession?" "why does Rakitic only ever get the ball in the defensive half of the field? Isn't he an attacking mid?" "why does everyone just stand around in the box waiting for someone to do something?" All of this seems emblematic of a club that is something less than the sum of its parts, largely because no one ever seems to have a plan; everyone knows what to do when there's a rebound off a shot, but that's it. The solution is to get more creative with who plays, and tactics in games--the 3-4-3 for Champions League was risky, but effective--but Luis Enrique is beginning to get that siege mentality look that doomed Michigan football this year.
Fandom is dumb because you pick sides for, ultimately, arbitrary reasons, and then ride or die with those decisions.
The thing about great teams, much like great writers, is that it can be hard to learn from them because they are not making the mistakes that allow for learning. It's quite possible to read something great and learn no lessons about how it was successfully constructed; it's just as possible that the personal creative processes hit a peak for that author in that one period of composition, and will never be matched. When you read something that goes wrong in a noticeable but minor way, it's much easier to see the flaw and imagine how one might go about fixing it.
I am still only learning how to watch football: the moments of chaos give way to patches where I am able to understand and follow both what is happening and why. This is good for increasing my technical vocabulary and very bad for being a fan; I can read the tactical review of a match and its impressions now sync with mine. Barcelona now features weird tactical decisions so notable that even I can recognize the flaws: "why are they only attacking on the left, even though the starting striker on that side is out?" "why is Messi playing like a midfielder?" "why is it the backs are the only ones who ever have the ball in possession?" "why does Rakitic only ever get the ball in the defensive half of the field? Isn't he an attacking mid?" "why does everyone just stand around in the box waiting for someone to do something?" All of this seems emblematic of a club that is something less than the sum of its parts, largely because no one ever seems to have a plan; everyone knows what to do when there's a rebound off a shot, but that's it. The solution is to get more creative with who plays, and tactics in games--the 3-4-3 for Champions League was risky, but effective--but Luis Enrique is beginning to get that siege mentality look that doomed Michigan football this year.
Fandom is dumb because you pick sides for, ultimately, arbitrary reasons, and then ride or die with those decisions.
11.12.14
FC Barcelona 3-1 Paris St. Germain
Rooting for Barça over Real Madrid allows for a level of moral satisfaction, but it's important to remember that they're the second biggest bully in the room. Real Madrid will always spend more, and do so because winning is the only thing that matters. Madrid, all too happy to wrap itself in the mantle of Spanishness and Catholicness, will remove the cross from its logo to appease Middle Eastern sponsors, and no one has to act surprised that whatever slight values the team nominally holds get compromised in the name of more money. But Barcelona's problems are of a similar nature.
On offense, the relevant questions are: "Should the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team get most of the shots? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team to the final, scored half of its goals, and is generally considered one of the best players of his generation/ever?" and the answer is "Why not all of them?" This game also featured a goal by another former Barça player who scored for PSG, dumped by Barcelona after one season--despite also being a world-class striker--because the manager did not particularly like him. They may be mes que un club, but that means sometimes they are just like un club--playing people with big contracts rather than promising youngsters, paying to buy good players and fix mistakes in talent development and planning, and all the rest.
It's a breath of fresh air after the environment of American sports, where each team does its best to play perpetually aggrieved, with a small loyal cadre of followers who are surrounded by 'haters' who Just Don't Get It, a role both trite and obvious that is, nevertheless, the default script for almost every team in almost every sport, amateur and professional. They Don't Believe In Us is maintained even by the teams everyone expects to win, i.e. the ones people believe in whether they want to or not, which suggests that coaching and motivation remains primitive. The only alternative script is The Team Is Bigger Than Any of Its Members, which is marginally better but just as reductive and simplistic.
I think Messi's "Derek Jeter, but better, of a sport people around the world actually follow" act is at least partly a calculation, if a smart one*, and I don't have any illusions that the seeming compatibility of Neymar, Suárez and Messi is based on the fact that they all realize they must get along with each other whether they like it or not. If things go south, it won't last. But I'll enjoy it while they do.
*And actually a brilliant bit of personality management, fulfilling two basic needs: crafting a personal narrative that allows him a maximum of space and freedom to live as much of a private life as possible, and driving people who don't like you crazy. As Jeter showed, there is nothing a lot of people hate more than a very good professional who keeps his head down and refuses to say anything shocking. How anyone can think Maradona better than Messi I will never understand, except that people seem to think that appearing emotionally unstable and volatile in all situations is a sign of genius.
On offense, the relevant questions are: "Should the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team get most of the shots? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team? Or the striker who carried his nation's World Cup team to the final, scored half of its goals, and is generally considered one of the best players of his generation/ever?" and the answer is "Why not all of them?" This game also featured a goal by another former Barça player who scored for PSG, dumped by Barcelona after one season--despite also being a world-class striker--because the manager did not particularly like him. They may be mes que un club, but that means sometimes they are just like un club--playing people with big contracts rather than promising youngsters, paying to buy good players and fix mistakes in talent development and planning, and all the rest.
It's a breath of fresh air after the environment of American sports, where each team does its best to play perpetually aggrieved, with a small loyal cadre of followers who are surrounded by 'haters' who Just Don't Get It, a role both trite and obvious that is, nevertheless, the default script for almost every team in almost every sport, amateur and professional. They Don't Believe In Us is maintained even by the teams everyone expects to win, i.e. the ones people believe in whether they want to or not, which suggests that coaching and motivation remains primitive. The only alternative script is The Team Is Bigger Than Any of Its Members, which is marginally better but just as reductive and simplistic.
I think Messi's "Derek Jeter, but better, of a sport people around the world actually follow" act is at least partly a calculation, if a smart one*, and I don't have any illusions that the seeming compatibility of Neymar, Suárez and Messi is based on the fact that they all realize they must get along with each other whether they like it or not. If things go south, it won't last. But I'll enjoy it while they do.
*And actually a brilliant bit of personality management, fulfilling two basic needs: crafting a personal narrative that allows him a maximum of space and freedom to live as much of a private life as possible, and driving people who don't like you crazy. As Jeter showed, there is nothing a lot of people hate more than a very good professional who keeps his head down and refuses to say anything shocking. How anyone can think Maradona better than Messi I will never understand, except that people seem to think that appearing emotionally unstable and volatile in all situations is a sign of genius.
5.12.14
Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson
Fear and Loathing in La Liga, Sid Lowe
After this year's World Cup, I decided to make a serious effort to follow soccer. I attempted something similar after the 2010 World Cup, but gave up when it proved difficult or impossible to find matches on tv, or find sources that wrote about soccer with regularity. In 2014, the Premier League has at least three games on tv every week, and while Spain's La Liga is currently broadcast on a channel I could not get even if I wanted to, the options for creative workarounds are much better. So I pick Tottenham Hotspur and Barcelona to follow, and engage in that ultimate sign of seriousness, reading my way through the literature on the subject.
Spurs and Barça were chosen for reasons of politics. Tottenham was, for most of its existence, a Jewish enclave in north London. British attitudes towards such people being what they are, the team and its supporters came in for a lot of abuse. The non-Jewish Tottenham supporters turned this around in 'Yankee Doodle' fashion and re-christened themselves as a "Jew Army"; if there's one thing guaranteed to win my heart over, it's the eagerness to stand and take it on behalf of someone else. (I first learned about this years ago at Normblog--here's a representative post) Barcelona was a similar matter: I've read enough about Spain in the Civil War years to know that a positive association with Franco was a non-starter, which ruled out Real Madrid and, as I discovered, Atlético Madrid, who were once sponsored by the Air Force. Barcelona made itself into the home of Catalan resistance to Franco, embraced its identity as mes que un club, and spurned putting any sponsorship on their kits for the longest time (the first sponsor was Unicef, in order to raise money for them). From Wilson's book I also learned that the two clubs were linked: Spurs developed the passing, attacking, pressing style of play that, through the Dutch, came to be associated with Barcelona.
Wilson's book occasionally overwhelms with technical detail: it explains a number of concepts easily enough, but many others require watching enough football to know what he's talking about. It's in this manner that detailed technical knowledge arises, though: one must learn and put learning into the service of observing reality. The book comes alive most when talking about English soccer, which is not surprising: Wilson demolishes the poor arguments put in favor of doing things the traditional way with a passion and intensity that simply does not exist elsewhere in the book.
Lowe is a superior theorist, though more journalistic of a writer. He grasps that the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry is not as either club would have it, that neither coalesced into what it claims for its identity until the 80s--or later. Real Madrid's anti-fascist credentials during the Civil War were as good as Barça's; after, for a brief period, they were better. But Real Madrid has consciously and repeatedly chosen to walk away from that legacy while Barcelona have embraced it. It's a silly rivalry, in a way, because these are two of the teams who have the money to get literally any player they want; they are two of perhaps half a dozen who are always buyers. Barcelona has just been cannier with its identity. Real Madrid is a club for fans who just want to say their team won something each year.
Fear and Loathing in La Liga, Sid Lowe
After this year's World Cup, I decided to make a serious effort to follow soccer. I attempted something similar after the 2010 World Cup, but gave up when it proved difficult or impossible to find matches on tv, or find sources that wrote about soccer with regularity. In 2014, the Premier League has at least three games on tv every week, and while Spain's La Liga is currently broadcast on a channel I could not get even if I wanted to, the options for creative workarounds are much better. So I pick Tottenham Hotspur and Barcelona to follow, and engage in that ultimate sign of seriousness, reading my way through the literature on the subject.
Spurs and Barça were chosen for reasons of politics. Tottenham was, for most of its existence, a Jewish enclave in north London. British attitudes towards such people being what they are, the team and its supporters came in for a lot of abuse. The non-Jewish Tottenham supporters turned this around in 'Yankee Doodle' fashion and re-christened themselves as a "Jew Army"; if there's one thing guaranteed to win my heart over, it's the eagerness to stand and take it on behalf of someone else. (I first learned about this years ago at Normblog--here's a representative post) Barcelona was a similar matter: I've read enough about Spain in the Civil War years to know that a positive association with Franco was a non-starter, which ruled out Real Madrid and, as I discovered, Atlético Madrid, who were once sponsored by the Air Force. Barcelona made itself into the home of Catalan resistance to Franco, embraced its identity as mes que un club, and spurned putting any sponsorship on their kits for the longest time (the first sponsor was Unicef, in order to raise money for them). From Wilson's book I also learned that the two clubs were linked: Spurs developed the passing, attacking, pressing style of play that, through the Dutch, came to be associated with Barcelona.
Wilson's book occasionally overwhelms with technical detail: it explains a number of concepts easily enough, but many others require watching enough football to know what he's talking about. It's in this manner that detailed technical knowledge arises, though: one must learn and put learning into the service of observing reality. The book comes alive most when talking about English soccer, which is not surprising: Wilson demolishes the poor arguments put in favor of doing things the traditional way with a passion and intensity that simply does not exist elsewhere in the book.
Lowe is a superior theorist, though more journalistic of a writer. He grasps that the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry is not as either club would have it, that neither coalesced into what it claims for its identity until the 80s--or later. Real Madrid's anti-fascist credentials during the Civil War were as good as Barça's; after, for a brief period, they were better. But Real Madrid has consciously and repeatedly chosen to walk away from that legacy while Barcelona have embraced it. It's a silly rivalry, in a way, because these are two of the teams who have the money to get literally any player they want; they are two of perhaps half a dozen who are always buyers. Barcelona has just been cannier with its identity. Real Madrid is a club for fans who just want to say their team won something each year.
4.12.14
Tottenham Hotspur 0-3 Chelsea
I gave up after ten minutes, when it became clear this would not be much of a game. As a longstanding fan of Michigan sports, I have developed the acute awareness of when a game is over. My team might be ahead, there might be a long time left to play, but there are some times when it's obvious. Being a sensible fellow, I have no interest in continuing to watch and confirming the accuracy of my intuition, and the tv goes off quickly. My intuitions have been wrong before, but less often than you might think.
Ten minutes was enough for Harry Kane to almost score twice, and Chelsea to actually score twice (and enough time to make it clear that Chelsea could score as many times as it wanted to). No need to keep subjecting yourself to that, not on a Wednesday afternoon.
I gave up after ten minutes, when it became clear this would not be much of a game. As a longstanding fan of Michigan sports, I have developed the acute awareness of when a game is over. My team might be ahead, there might be a long time left to play, but there are some times when it's obvious. Being a sensible fellow, I have no interest in continuing to watch and confirming the accuracy of my intuition, and the tv goes off quickly. My intuitions have been wrong before, but less often than you might think.
Ten minutes was enough for Harry Kane to almost score twice, and Chelsea to actually score twice (and enough time to make it clear that Chelsea could score as many times as it wanted to). No need to keep subjecting yourself to that, not on a Wednesday afternoon.
1.12.14
In which I attempt to work out some thoughts on being a sports fan using the weekend's games as fodder
Michigan some, Ohio State a lot more
Why watch a game whose outcome was never particularly in doubt? Why did I watch this same game last year, under the same conditions? Why did I watch most of the games this year? To be a Michigan fan is to be waiting for something to go wrong. This year, I learned a new variation: to be certain that something would go wrong, to have it be only a question of time. Like many Michigan fans, I've found myself emotionally disconnected despite my loyalty; like many Michigan fans, it's not clear to me how we recover from this.
Everton 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur
Prior to this game, I tweeted "remind me again why I'm a fan of Premier League Michigan?" It's the same general problem: disconnected coach who looks like he's in over his head, problems with ownership, fans disgruntled by the previous two, poor general play and no particular hope. Given what it spends, Spurs should always be in the top 8 of the Premier League, but have not managed to get results.
The reason to be a fan was evident in this game: Spurs have very good pieces that, when they come together, are a joy to watch. Football is often a grind-it-out affair, especially in the Premier League, but it has its moments of lightness. No one's a better symbol for that than Harry Kane, who most Spurs fans are convinced is the next great player. Which, as it turns out, is exhilarating to watch. Nobody knows how good Kane will end up being, even Kane himself. We just know he hasn't reached the limits of his talent yet. The effect is strange: fans and teammates expect something remarkable to happen every time he touches the ball. And, improbably, remarkable things often do happen, as they did in this game--solid offensive and defensive efforts. Being human, he makes mistakes and fails to follow through on a number of occasions, but there's something touching in the purity of belief in his talent. That seems like a very good reason to keep watching.
FC Barcelona 1-0 Valencia
Watching soccer is different than watching football: it arrives in 45-minute chunks, with no commercials. It takes much less time to watch a soccer match than a football game, but the compactness limits the ability to watch much of it. In football, the noon games can become the 3:30 games can become the 6:00 games without much effort, because the action is parceled out five minutes at a time with extensive breaks, the sporting equivalent of eating sugary cereal--it's there and it expects nothing of you. After the first half of this game, in which Barça was completely disorganized, I could not go on. So I missed the last-second winner from Busquets.
The last-minute winner is another way in which soccer keeps interest. American sports contests are frequently laughers, where one overmatched team loses to a superior one, and some large portion of the game is played with no real hope of changing the outcome, and only for appearances. In soccer, because every result is potentially important, and goals scored and goal differential often feature as tiebreakers for league standings, each team has a reason to play the game out to the end in every match. Nothing is ever quite hopeless--there remain in-season competitions, tournaments, and derbys which allow even the most inept of teams the chance of winning something--and there are very real costs to giving up, with the possibility of relegation.
Michigan some, Ohio State a lot more
Why watch a game whose outcome was never particularly in doubt? Why did I watch this same game last year, under the same conditions? Why did I watch most of the games this year? To be a Michigan fan is to be waiting for something to go wrong. This year, I learned a new variation: to be certain that something would go wrong, to have it be only a question of time. Like many Michigan fans, I've found myself emotionally disconnected despite my loyalty; like many Michigan fans, it's not clear to me how we recover from this.
Everton 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur
Prior to this game, I tweeted "remind me again why I'm a fan of Premier League Michigan?" It's the same general problem: disconnected coach who looks like he's in over his head, problems with ownership, fans disgruntled by the previous two, poor general play and no particular hope. Given what it spends, Spurs should always be in the top 8 of the Premier League, but have not managed to get results.
The reason to be a fan was evident in this game: Spurs have very good pieces that, when they come together, are a joy to watch. Football is often a grind-it-out affair, especially in the Premier League, but it has its moments of lightness. No one's a better symbol for that than Harry Kane, who most Spurs fans are convinced is the next great player. Which, as it turns out, is exhilarating to watch. Nobody knows how good Kane will end up being, even Kane himself. We just know he hasn't reached the limits of his talent yet. The effect is strange: fans and teammates expect something remarkable to happen every time he touches the ball. And, improbably, remarkable things often do happen, as they did in this game--solid offensive and defensive efforts. Being human, he makes mistakes and fails to follow through on a number of occasions, but there's something touching in the purity of belief in his talent. That seems like a very good reason to keep watching.
FC Barcelona 1-0 Valencia
Watching soccer is different than watching football: it arrives in 45-minute chunks, with no commercials. It takes much less time to watch a soccer match than a football game, but the compactness limits the ability to watch much of it. In football, the noon games can become the 3:30 games can become the 6:00 games without much effort, because the action is parceled out five minutes at a time with extensive breaks, the sporting equivalent of eating sugary cereal--it's there and it expects nothing of you. After the first half of this game, in which Barça was completely disorganized, I could not go on. So I missed the last-second winner from Busquets.
The last-minute winner is another way in which soccer keeps interest. American sports contests are frequently laughers, where one overmatched team loses to a superior one, and some large portion of the game is played with no real hope of changing the outcome, and only for appearances. In soccer, because every result is potentially important, and goals scored and goal differential often feature as tiebreakers for league standings, each team has a reason to play the game out to the end in every match. Nothing is ever quite hopeless--there remain in-season competitions, tournaments, and derbys which allow even the most inept of teams the chance of winning something--and there are very real costs to giving up, with the possibility of relegation.
1.10.14
On Michigan, Michigan Football, and Integrity
i.
Viewed from a certain perspective, a university is a machine whose purpose is to turn high school students into donors (put more nobly, "alumni"). In the main, schools impart the character necessary to write checks by fostering a unique kind of student culture, for better or worse: Princeton students have an uncanny graciousness in all circumstances and only some awareness of what their personal limitations might consist of; Chicago students work harder than any others, but take the school's unofficial 'where fun goes to die' motto as a mirthless prophecy rather than self-satire.
Flagship public universities are not like this. They offer no one singular experience that it is possible for everyone to participate in, or shapes them whether they participate in it or not (Duke students who do not participate in the Greek scene nevertheless have their experiences shaped by that scene). My alma mater has 20,000-24,000 undergraduates floating around at any one time; my freshman dorm held 1000. There's no reason for any of these people to interact: Nursing School students spend all their time at one end of campus, apart from other academic buildings; the Art, Music, and Engineering schools are on a separate campus accessible by bus, but no less than a 30 minute walk from the next closest part of the campus (if you're willing to jump some train tracks). There are broad distributional requirements that can be fulfilled in any number of ways, and even though everyone is required to take a section of freshman comp, the sections vary as widely as the (large number of) people who teach them. We have no reason to have anything in common except occupying the same (very large) space for a period of time.
But we do have football. I've mentioned this before, but one of the details that The Big Chill gets absolutely correct is when everyone sits down to watch football. Everyone follows the football team. Not everyone goes to the games (I didn't), not everyone knows who the players are. Not everyone even entirely gets how football is played. But everyone, while you're on campus, knows whether we won or not, and (usually) at least some of what happened during the game. People who go to smaller schools tend not to understand this common social element: not everyone loves the team, but everyone follows it, and it's one of the very few things all these people have in common. We might stick to it to a greater or lesser extent in the following years, but it's (one part of) what we did when we were there.
ii.
My experience with team sports ended with two not-particularly-glorious years of junior high track. Our coach would remind us at every opportunity that whenever we wore our uniform, or our sweats, we had to be careful, because there were little kids who were looking up to us and would emulate whatever we did. I'm pretty sure I scoffed at it, even then, because what kid looks up to the junior high track team? Subsequent experience has pretty much confirmed her to be right: in college I worked at a science museum with an emphasis on children's education, and was required by the management to always be in logo-bearing shirts while working. Walking to and from that job, I would occasionally come across kids out with their parents, and without fail the kids would notice my shirt and get excited. They also would watch whatever I did, and they would try to emulate it. If I crossed a street against the signal, you could hear them asking their parents why they had to wait.
If there's anything else Michigan prides itself on, it's taking that approach to absolutely everything. I sometimes like to joke that the New Testament's ethic boils down to "everything you do matters all the time," and it's that sort of ethic that the university tries to instill. A Michigan Man will be thoughtful about everything, always cautious about what he's done and is attempting to do, and genuinely worried about identifying the right course of action, to the point of overkill. If you're a state school, this is a very sensible ethic (Carolina has its own variant on it): some of your students will go on to do stereotypically great things, but most of them will return to their communities, or find their own, and will be constantly bombarded with the expectations that come from leadership on any level. As Aristotle would have said, one practices the acts of a virtuous person so that when the time comes, and making the right decisions under pressure is needed, the right actions will appear as if by instinct.
iii.
Integrity is, as they say, what you do when no one is watching, when there's no one to lie to but God or yourself, and in that moment you get some sense of who someone is. The academic world has its own parallel to this, when someone reaches out to help you even when you could not possibly help to advance their career, and the time they take on you leaves them with less for their own work. People who are good, insomuch as anyone is good, will do these little and unnoticed things for the sheer reason that a good person does them. Michigan has its own exemplar of this character in Raoul Wallenberg, a student in the 1930s who could have taken advantage of his family's industrial connections to sit out World War II entirely, and instead created and implemented a scheme that saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary at the end of the war.
Integrity is also what you do when everyone is watching, and at this, Michigan has systematically failed. The football coaching and training staff did a horrible thing, allowing a concussed player to continue playing (for those unfamiliar, a second blow to the head for a concussed person can result in death). The virtuous action here would be to take responsibility, apologize, and vow to improve in the future. Instead, we have seen: denial that any head injury occurred, unwillingness to admit fault or culpability or even that a mistake was made, releasing alternate (conflicting) explanations without noticing or caring about contradictions.
Which leaves us with the question: who, basing themselves only on the words and actions of Michigan's head coach in the last week, could possibly consider him a role model? And if Michigan's coach isn't going to be a role model, why are we bothering with football in the first place?
Viewed from a certain perspective, a university is a machine whose purpose is to turn high school students into donors (put more nobly, "alumni"). In the main, schools impart the character necessary to write checks by fostering a unique kind of student culture, for better or worse: Princeton students have an uncanny graciousness in all circumstances and only some awareness of what their personal limitations might consist of; Chicago students work harder than any others, but take the school's unofficial 'where fun goes to die' motto as a mirthless prophecy rather than self-satire.
Flagship public universities are not like this. They offer no one singular experience that it is possible for everyone to participate in, or shapes them whether they participate in it or not (Duke students who do not participate in the Greek scene nevertheless have their experiences shaped by that scene). My alma mater has 20,000-24,000 undergraduates floating around at any one time; my freshman dorm held 1000. There's no reason for any of these people to interact: Nursing School students spend all their time at one end of campus, apart from other academic buildings; the Art, Music, and Engineering schools are on a separate campus accessible by bus, but no less than a 30 minute walk from the next closest part of the campus (if you're willing to jump some train tracks). There are broad distributional requirements that can be fulfilled in any number of ways, and even though everyone is required to take a section of freshman comp, the sections vary as widely as the (large number of) people who teach them. We have no reason to have anything in common except occupying the same (very large) space for a period of time.
But we do have football. I've mentioned this before, but one of the details that The Big Chill gets absolutely correct is when everyone sits down to watch football. Everyone follows the football team. Not everyone goes to the games (I didn't), not everyone knows who the players are. Not everyone even entirely gets how football is played. But everyone, while you're on campus, knows whether we won or not, and (usually) at least some of what happened during the game. People who go to smaller schools tend not to understand this common social element: not everyone loves the team, but everyone follows it, and it's one of the very few things all these people have in common. We might stick to it to a greater or lesser extent in the following years, but it's (one part of) what we did when we were there.
ii.
My experience with team sports ended with two not-particularly-glorious years of junior high track. Our coach would remind us at every opportunity that whenever we wore our uniform, or our sweats, we had to be careful, because there were little kids who were looking up to us and would emulate whatever we did. I'm pretty sure I scoffed at it, even then, because what kid looks up to the junior high track team? Subsequent experience has pretty much confirmed her to be right: in college I worked at a science museum with an emphasis on children's education, and was required by the management to always be in logo-bearing shirts while working. Walking to and from that job, I would occasionally come across kids out with their parents, and without fail the kids would notice my shirt and get excited. They also would watch whatever I did, and they would try to emulate it. If I crossed a street against the signal, you could hear them asking their parents why they had to wait.
If there's anything else Michigan prides itself on, it's taking that approach to absolutely everything. I sometimes like to joke that the New Testament's ethic boils down to "everything you do matters all the time," and it's that sort of ethic that the university tries to instill. A Michigan Man will be thoughtful about everything, always cautious about what he's done and is attempting to do, and genuinely worried about identifying the right course of action, to the point of overkill. If you're a state school, this is a very sensible ethic (Carolina has its own variant on it): some of your students will go on to do stereotypically great things, but most of them will return to their communities, or find their own, and will be constantly bombarded with the expectations that come from leadership on any level. As Aristotle would have said, one practices the acts of a virtuous person so that when the time comes, and making the right decisions under pressure is needed, the right actions will appear as if by instinct.
iii.
Integrity is, as they say, what you do when no one is watching, when there's no one to lie to but God or yourself, and in that moment you get some sense of who someone is. The academic world has its own parallel to this, when someone reaches out to help you even when you could not possibly help to advance their career, and the time they take on you leaves them with less for their own work. People who are good, insomuch as anyone is good, will do these little and unnoticed things for the sheer reason that a good person does them. Michigan has its own exemplar of this character in Raoul Wallenberg, a student in the 1930s who could have taken advantage of his family's industrial connections to sit out World War II entirely, and instead created and implemented a scheme that saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary at the end of the war.
Integrity is also what you do when everyone is watching, and at this, Michigan has systematically failed. The football coaching and training staff did a horrible thing, allowing a concussed player to continue playing (for those unfamiliar, a second blow to the head for a concussed person can result in death). The virtuous action here would be to take responsibility, apologize, and vow to improve in the future. Instead, we have seen: denial that any head injury occurred, unwillingness to admit fault or culpability or even that a mistake was made, releasing alternate (conflicting) explanations without noticing or caring about contradictions.
Which leaves us with the question: who, basing themselves only on the words and actions of Michigan's head coach in the last week, could possibly consider him a role model? And if Michigan's coach isn't going to be a role model, why are we bothering with football in the first place?
17.9.14
On the NFL, Domestic Violence, and Child Abuse
The miracle of the Ray Rice fiasco is that the NFL has, improbably, failed to do the one thing that American corporate culture dictates: fire the person responsible as quickly as possible. If the NFL had fired Roger Goodell last Monday, or he had resigned, the story would be dead right now, and no one would care. Instead, we have been able to witness something more surprising: a large segment of the population figuring out the problem of American masculinity in real time.
We don't need to look very far for evidence that a quick firing would have killed interest in the topic: Penn State did the sensible thing and fired Joe Paterno as soon as it became clear he knew something about the decades of child sexual assault perpetrated by one of his assistants--fired him because knowing something and not reporting it is morally inexcusable. As a result of this decision, the people who were maddest about the crime considered justice (mostly) done and forgot about it, and the Cult of Paterno quickly came to think of him as a man railroaded, and preferred living in their paranoid fantasy of people who hate PSU for 'doing things the right way,' which also conveniently allows them to avoid any extended reflection on what happened and where it happened.
Goodell didn't resign, and so people noticed that Jim Harbaugh (may he never coach at Michigan) talked a tough line about domestic violence but was more than willing to forgive, and that the Carolina Panthers were allowing a man who had been convicted(!) of domestic violence to continue playing. And then they noticed, or remembered, that the NFL has a constant, ongoing problem with domestic violence. All of which is good, and all of which only happens because an entity obsessed with its image failed to execute the most basic of PR moves.
And then there was Adrian Peterson beating his child bloody, which led to this:
A grown man with impeccable masculinity credentials saying on an NFL broadcast that his mother was wrong to have beaten him, and the NFL doesn't care at all about women.
As a result, the conversation has shifted from a question of football, or football culture, to a question of American masculinity more generally. It leads people like Drew Magary, he of the Dick Joke Jamboroo, to write:
It is eminently logical, reasonable, and centered around the idea of a father having adult responsibilities he must manage in a way compatible with his maturity and his reason. The continued crisis leads to people reflecting in deeper, more complex ways about the nature of masculinity in football. It solidifies a consensus amongst people who would not have devoted a lot of attention to the issue that domestic violence is a widespread problem, and corporal punishment is not an acceptable parenting strategy. It creates a clear and vocal consensus where it might have been unexpressed, and encourages people to disapprove of behavior that falls outside those norms--a rare, but welcome, sign of social pressure being exerted to good ends. It gives us that most American of spectacles, the sponsors bailing out. Nothing impresses an American like declining the opportunity to make money, and very little makes money like the NFL: if a company does not want to be associated with them, it sends the powerful signal that something has gone terribly wrong.
So long as the condition of Goodell's remaining in office is a continued spotlight on domestic violence, child abuse, and the people who would enable them, I hope he never resigns.
We don't need to look very far for evidence that a quick firing would have killed interest in the topic: Penn State did the sensible thing and fired Joe Paterno as soon as it became clear he knew something about the decades of child sexual assault perpetrated by one of his assistants--fired him because knowing something and not reporting it is morally inexcusable. As a result of this decision, the people who were maddest about the crime considered justice (mostly) done and forgot about it, and the Cult of Paterno quickly came to think of him as a man railroaded, and preferred living in their paranoid fantasy of people who hate PSU for 'doing things the right way,' which also conveniently allows them to avoid any extended reflection on what happened and where it happened.
Goodell didn't resign, and so people noticed that Jim Harbaugh (may he never coach at Michigan) talked a tough line about domestic violence but was more than willing to forgive, and that the Carolina Panthers were allowing a man who had been convicted(!) of domestic violence to continue playing. And then they noticed, or remembered, that the NFL has a constant, ongoing problem with domestic violence. All of which is good, and all of which only happens because an entity obsessed with its image failed to execute the most basic of PR moves.
And then there was Adrian Peterson beating his child bloody, which led to this:
A grown man with impeccable masculinity credentials saying on an NFL broadcast that his mother was wrong to have beaten him, and the NFL doesn't care at all about women.
As a result, the conversation has shifted from a question of football, or football culture, to a question of American masculinity more generally. It leads people like Drew Magary, he of the Dick Joke Jamboroo, to write:
That's what corporal punishment is. It's a failure. It's a complete breakdown of communication between parent and child. Children are unpredictable, reckless, and occasionally violent. They can drive otherwise rational humans into fits of rage. And I have had moments—many moments, certainly—where I have felt that rage after exhausting every last possible idea to get them to behave: bribery, timeouts, the silent treatment, walking away (they follow you!), distraction, throwing the kids outside (they end up ringing the doorbell a lot), you name it. So I have tried corporal punishment as a final resort, a desperate last stab at closure. That's an easy way for parents to justify it: You forced me to do this, child. Spanking the kid did nothing for me. It only made me realize what a fucking failure I was. Oh, and the kid still kept yelling.
Spanking and beating your kid teaches your kid to talk with violence. It validates hitting as a legitimate form of communication. Everything is modeled. I have yelled at my kids, and then seen them yell. I have smacked my kid, and then watched her smack someone else. They don't learn to be good from any of it. They don't learn to sit still and practice piano sonatas. All they learn is, Hey, this works! And then they go practice what you just preached. Beating a kid creates an atmosphere of toxicity in a house that lingers forever: One beating leads to the next, and to the next, and to the next, until parents don't even know why they're beating the kid anymore. They just do. Once it is normalized, it takes root. Parents begin to like the habit. Those pictures of Peterson's kid? The violence can get worse ... much worse ... so much worse it's astonishing.
It is eminently logical, reasonable, and centered around the idea of a father having adult responsibilities he must manage in a way compatible with his maturity and his reason. The continued crisis leads to people reflecting in deeper, more complex ways about the nature of masculinity in football. It solidifies a consensus amongst people who would not have devoted a lot of attention to the issue that domestic violence is a widespread problem, and corporal punishment is not an acceptable parenting strategy. It creates a clear and vocal consensus where it might have been unexpressed, and encourages people to disapprove of behavior that falls outside those norms--a rare, but welcome, sign of social pressure being exerted to good ends. It gives us that most American of spectacles, the sponsors bailing out. Nothing impresses an American like declining the opportunity to make money, and very little makes money like the NFL: if a company does not want to be associated with them, it sends the powerful signal that something has gone terribly wrong.
So long as the condition of Goodell's remaining in office is a continued spotlight on domestic violence, child abuse, and the people who would enable them, I hope he never resigns.
30.7.14
Hipster confessions first: I've been watching the World Cup since 1998, where I learned the first sacred principles of the sport: always root against Brazil, Italy and Germany, in that order. As with the others things I do in my life, I like to learn about the mechanics of the sport as I go along, in order to better understand the game. This time around I learned two things: the importance of the first touch, and the difference between high-crossing and attacking the box as offensive styles. Both of the ideas are simple. The first touch a striker gets matters a great deal, because he has the maximum offensive advantage at that point, having a plan for what he wants to do and keeping his opponents from knowing. Touches beyond the first give defensive players a chance to get into better position, close off potential angles, and figure out the striker's plan of attack. High-crossing offenses rely on confusion amongst central defenders to make scoring opportunities; box-attacking offenses crowd players into the center and allow offensive help to come on the wings.
What fascinates me about this is the same thing that fascinates me about the technical problems of writing or reading: they represent human attempts to solve human problems, where an author's strategies for tricking himself for writing are different tokens of the same type as high-pressing a tiki-taka offense. Any one particular author's solutions are unlikely to work for me, since my problems and difficulties have different emphases, but the approach to solving a problem is likely to be quite useful, even as a solution for an entirely different type of problem. I've written before about how "The Part About the Crimes" in 2666 was a great model for my dissertation, since they faced on some level of abstraction the same difficulty: how to write small variations on the same sort of thing over and over again while keeping the reader interested.
I find the incuriosity of people in the face of the boggling variety of human expressions to be baffling, but that's another post for another time.
What fascinates me about this is the same thing that fascinates me about the technical problems of writing or reading: they represent human attempts to solve human problems, where an author's strategies for tricking himself for writing are different tokens of the same type as high-pressing a tiki-taka offense. Any one particular author's solutions are unlikely to work for me, since my problems and difficulties have different emphases, but the approach to solving a problem is likely to be quite useful, even as a solution for an entirely different type of problem. I've written before about how "The Part About the Crimes" in 2666 was a great model for my dissertation, since they faced on some level of abstraction the same difficulty: how to write small variations on the same sort of thing over and over again while keeping the reader interested.
I find the incuriosity of people in the face of the boggling variety of human expressions to be baffling, but that's another post for another time.
9.7.13
Adventures in Cultural Consumption
Bull Durham: I believe that there are people out there who never change their minds. At whatever young age, they determine their opinions on politics, religion, and art; from that point on, they only admit as useful or good those things which correspond with greater or lesser accuracy to the received opinion. Vita brevis ars longa: there's a lot out there to encounter, knowing all of it is impossible, and we all make do or satisfice from time to time. If you've hit on a vein of books or movies that provide some measure of contemplation and prefer them to the exclusion of others, it's not the worst cultural vice one might have.
Over the last few years, it's become obvious to me that there are some discontinuities in my thoughts and tastes: I think differently about a large number of topics. Sometimes those thoughts are in continuity with the previous ones, but sometimes they are the arrival of the new and unexpected. There has been no sharp turn in my reading habits comparable to being handed 2666 by my mother when I complained of having nothing that seemed worth reading. It wasn't just a different part of world literature that opened up--it was a different attitude to literature in general, what was worth reading and why. So also the reduction of T.S. Eliot--the poems that opened up possibilities when I was 16 now read mawkish and incomprehensible, with a few good lines.
As someone whose writing tends towards the pessimistic disapprobation of things I don't particularly like, but who recognizes this capacity to react to things differently, I try to make a point of periodically re-trying things I haven't liked in the past. Joseph Conrad is a novelist people seem to think highly of, though he's never done much for me. I can see and understand why he is respected, even if it doesn't speak to me. Every five years or so I make a point to read one of his novels, to see whether I've come around. What's a week every five years? Similarly, I have begun to think it's time to approach Tolstoy again, after 2002's War and Peace disaster: maybe Anna Karenina is as great as everyone says, and I've just been pigheaded. (I am convinced that the reason I didn't like Middlemarch is that I read it too young.)
There are cultural objects that are blocked off to the young, which is the sort of thing young people hate to hear. It's hard to imagine what being 30 is like when one is still a teenager, and by the time 30 comes around one judges failures quite differently. It happened with The Big Chill, which at 21 looked like a bunch of hippies being terrible people, and at 28 looked a lot like people trying to grapple in a rare moment of reflection over what their lives had become when they weren't paying much attention.
It happened also with Bull Durham: when I first saw it, there was the loose, meandering plot, the periodic attempts at humor, and the profanity and vulgarity that attempted to cover up the first two. Now, there's a really sad movie about the end of youth, learning to compromise on one's dreams, and the weariness of chasing something that's as much burden as dream. Nuke LaLoosh is a MacGuffin who gradually slides out of the movie's focus, leaving two characters who have to figure out how old they really are. One has to respect a movie that ends with a monologue about being tired.
9.4.13
I get that "white people solve racism" is an annoying thing in Hollywood movies, I really do. But sometimes it really was the case that white people of character actually intentionally chose to make a difference in the field they controlled, and Branch Rickey was one of those people: he signed Jackie Robinson out of business sense and idealism. The business sense doesn't cancel out the idealism, which was significant and showed up in other areas of his life, too. Which you would know if you bothered to learn any of the story, as the author of the above-linked post obviously did not.
Excuse me: University of Michigan alumnus Branch Rickey.
Excuse me: University of Michigan alumnus Branch Rickey.
6.9.12
This is not an analogy:
One of the things I found strangest in the aftermath of Michigan football's loss to Alabama is that the person who came in for the most criticism was Rich Rodriguez, a.k.a. the guy who has not been Michigan's football coach for 18 months. It's the fact that he recruited not-very-good players, you see, that prevented Michigan from competing well, and not any problem on the part of the present coaches. By contrast, Rodriguez deserved none of the credit for last year's team going 11-2, and his attempts to claim that the team would have done similarly well had he still been coach were met with derision, because obviously that team's successful record was attributable to the current coaching staff. How Hoke can get the credit for 2011 but none of the blame when things go wrong in 2012 is truly baffling, but that's fandom for you.
(Actually not an analogy: I do think the coaching level has improved, but Michigan fans have just hit the period in which it becomes obvious their coaches are just very good, and not geniuses. They cannot, by and large, admit this to themselves right now (preferred coping technique: "I'm just waiting for 2014/2015, then we'll be awesome"), but they've realized it.)
One of the things I found strangest in the aftermath of Michigan football's loss to Alabama is that the person who came in for the most criticism was Rich Rodriguez, a.k.a. the guy who has not been Michigan's football coach for 18 months. It's the fact that he recruited not-very-good players, you see, that prevented Michigan from competing well, and not any problem on the part of the present coaches. By contrast, Rodriguez deserved none of the credit for last year's team going 11-2, and his attempts to claim that the team would have done similarly well had he still been coach were met with derision, because obviously that team's successful record was attributable to the current coaching staff. How Hoke can get the credit for 2011 but none of the blame when things go wrong in 2012 is truly baffling, but that's fandom for you.
(Actually not an analogy: I do think the coaching level has improved, but Michigan fans have just hit the period in which it becomes obvious their coaches are just very good, and not geniuses. They cannot, by and large, admit this to themselves right now (preferred coping technique: "I'm just waiting for 2014/2015, then we'll be awesome"), but they've realized it.)
22.8.12
Allen Barra... what's the proper metaphor here? I'll go with "flenses"... Joe Posnanski for his Joe Paterno biography. Why Posnanski wants to sink his reputation on this particular issue, I'll never know. The sins Barra lists are many, from conspicuously tilting the narrative by claiming not to tilt it, to allowing anonymous sources to trash anyone who Paterno didn't like:
In a disgraceful bit of deflecting responsibility away from Paterno, Posnanski tries to taint Triponey's reputation: "One close friend of Paterno wondered, 'Don't reporters know how to use Google?' If they had, they would have found that Triponey's time at Penn State was not without controversy, including well-publicized clashes with the student government, the campus radio station, and fraternities." Too bad reporters can't Google the name of the anonymous close friend who said this and failed to mention that dealing with controversy is precisely what Triponey's job was all about.
Posnanski closes out his chapter by quoting a player: 'If it was up to that woman"—Triponey—"they would have thrown me out of school and let me rot. That's how she was. ... But now I'm a father, and I have a child, and I have a good job. I owe that to Joe Paterno. He wasn't perfect, but he believed in me. When nobody else did, he believed in me." Unfortunately, the player, like the Paterno friend who suggested Googling Triponey, is unnamed by Posnanski.
1.8.12
I assume it would be obvious (contra NBC's drumbeat to the contrary) that Michael Phelps is not the greatest olympian of all time given that no one, to the best of my knowledge, thought that Russian gymnast who had previously won more medals that anyone else was the best of all time before him.
24.7.12
On Penn State:
I've written before about the implications of the Penn State scandal, so I figured I should probably write something about the NCAA's punishment. In this instance, I think it's important to separate out three different angles from which the punishment should be interpreted:
1. The punishment: The punishments themselves are all, taken separately, reasonable responses to the situation. If the charge is that Paterno, Spanier et al decided not to turn in Sandusky because they believed doing so would damage the university's football program and its ability to police itself, then punishments that directly affect the most important aspects of the football program are merited. Football generates a lot of money: Penn State was fined some of that money, with the stipulation that the payments a. must come from football revenues and b. cannot affect the funding of other sports. Paterno's quest to get the record for most wins drove much of his behavior: strip him of those wins. The football program was overvalued vis-a-vis the rest of the university: allow it to continue, but not in a form where it can contribute to the previously poisonous culture (i.e. they can play, but only for love of the game). Most importantly, make sure that any student-athletes are not negatively affected by allowing them to transfer or leave the program without penalty. All measured responses. One might think them to be cumulatively too much, but that gets to point #3.
2. The NCAA: The NCAA is a corrupt and self-interested organization that only wishes to perpetuate its own power; this power grab was unprecedented, and it's troubling; the charges of hypocritical and sleazy morality are all absolutely true. And yet: the NCAA were the only people in a position to make these changes happen. This combination of damned-but-the-best-we've-got should look familiar to libertarians: it's the problem of the state writ small. The state is a morally contingent form of organization that just as frequently tramples on the rights and interests of individuals as it serves them (left and right can agree on this, I think); even so, sometimes the state is the only body with the authority to solve problems of domination in society--slavery being the big example. In the same way, yes, the NCAA is corrupt, but it's one of the few entities that can address the parallel corruption of individual schools. That it is an imperfect carrier of justice does not mean it cannot bring justice anyway.
3. Penn State culture: This is the most troubling part for me, even now. It's a Penn State-specific problem. What happened at Penn State couldn't happen at my alma mater because there are a sufficiently large number of people in Ann Arbor who do not care one iota about football and are happy to work against it. When the world's most minor 'major violations' were discovered at Michigan, it led to the rending of garments, full cooperation with the NCAA, and a sense that even the slightest deviation from strictly following the rules was completely unacceptable. The integrity of the football program and the university matter so much that punishment is accepted as part of the process of repentance.
The opposite seems to be happening at Penn State, even now: a complete denial of the facts, unwillingness to believe Paterno could have done anything bad, and the belief that the punishments now being given have nothing to do with the football program being out of control, but are rather attempts to tear down the Paterno legacy, of the "they've wanted to do this for decades, and now they have their excuse" variety.
There's very little actual contrition: there are pleas to remember the victims, as though remembering the victims and attempting to correct the culture responsible for the mess in the first place are mutually exclusive; there's an insistence that Penn State was always a university first and a football program second; there's an emphasis on graduated players, as though that matters, or as though it can make up for literally the worst college football scandal ever. They want to remember the victims and Joe Paterno as a great, nearly perfect, man, but those cannot coexist, either, and to embrace the reality of the latter is to deny the reality of the former. But it is a difficult thing to accept that something happens because, and not in spite of, the culture at an institution you love and cherish
I've written before about the implications of the Penn State scandal, so I figured I should probably write something about the NCAA's punishment. In this instance, I think it's important to separate out three different angles from which the punishment should be interpreted:
1. The punishment: The punishments themselves are all, taken separately, reasonable responses to the situation. If the charge is that Paterno, Spanier et al decided not to turn in Sandusky because they believed doing so would damage the university's football program and its ability to police itself, then punishments that directly affect the most important aspects of the football program are merited. Football generates a lot of money: Penn State was fined some of that money, with the stipulation that the payments a. must come from football revenues and b. cannot affect the funding of other sports. Paterno's quest to get the record for most wins drove much of his behavior: strip him of those wins. The football program was overvalued vis-a-vis the rest of the university: allow it to continue, but not in a form where it can contribute to the previously poisonous culture (i.e. they can play, but only for love of the game). Most importantly, make sure that any student-athletes are not negatively affected by allowing them to transfer or leave the program without penalty. All measured responses. One might think them to be cumulatively too much, but that gets to point #3.
2. The NCAA: The NCAA is a corrupt and self-interested organization that only wishes to perpetuate its own power; this power grab was unprecedented, and it's troubling; the charges of hypocritical and sleazy morality are all absolutely true. And yet: the NCAA were the only people in a position to make these changes happen. This combination of damned-but-the-best-we've-got should look familiar to libertarians: it's the problem of the state writ small. The state is a morally contingent form of organization that just as frequently tramples on the rights and interests of individuals as it serves them (left and right can agree on this, I think); even so, sometimes the state is the only body with the authority to solve problems of domination in society--slavery being the big example. In the same way, yes, the NCAA is corrupt, but it's one of the few entities that can address the parallel corruption of individual schools. That it is an imperfect carrier of justice does not mean it cannot bring justice anyway.
3. Penn State culture: This is the most troubling part for me, even now. It's a Penn State-specific problem. What happened at Penn State couldn't happen at my alma mater because there are a sufficiently large number of people in Ann Arbor who do not care one iota about football and are happy to work against it. When the world's most minor 'major violations' were discovered at Michigan, it led to the rending of garments, full cooperation with the NCAA, and a sense that even the slightest deviation from strictly following the rules was completely unacceptable. The integrity of the football program and the university matter so much that punishment is accepted as part of the process of repentance.
The opposite seems to be happening at Penn State, even now: a complete denial of the facts, unwillingness to believe Paterno could have done anything bad, and the belief that the punishments now being given have nothing to do with the football program being out of control, but are rather attempts to tear down the Paterno legacy, of the "they've wanted to do this for decades, and now they have their excuse" variety.
There's very little actual contrition: there are pleas to remember the victims, as though remembering the victims and attempting to correct the culture responsible for the mess in the first place are mutually exclusive; there's an insistence that Penn State was always a university first and a football program second; there's an emphasis on graduated players, as though that matters, or as though it can make up for literally the worst college football scandal ever. They want to remember the victims and Joe Paterno as a great, nearly perfect, man, but those cannot coexist, either, and to embrace the reality of the latter is to deny the reality of the former. But it is a difficult thing to accept that something happens because, and not in spite of, the culture at an institution you love and cherish
13.7.12
Above My Pay Grade:
Brian mostly gets it right, re: Penn State:
The alternative is the tendency to accept the conclusion of one's own brain, which includes the tendency to accept the conclusions of others as well. This usually takes the form of a false humility: not being smart enough to have figured something out, or not having devoted the time to a subject, or assuming that someone must know what they're talking about, or that people have a good reason for their actions, becomes a reason to accept someone else's conclusions wholeheartedly. A mechanism along these lines can explain both Paterno ("I figured the people who were nominally my bosses would take care of it") and his apologists ("He must've had a good reason to do what he did, even if I can't come up with one and a neutral interpretation would be massively condemnatory"), a way to avoid responsibility and avoid the charge that one should have taken responsibility anyway.
To be sure, this is not intended to reduce to a simple moral along the lines of "question authority," though, in a pinch, that will do. Instead, I think the Penn State scandal reinforces the idea that being a fully human, functional, moral adult is a full-time occupation: if you are not perpetually worrying over whether you are doing the right thing, or have done enough, then it's a sure sign that you are not.*
*If you are, for example, in a position to get sanctimonious about your own virtue, that's a warning sign.
Brian mostly gets it right, re: Penn State:
SIDE NOTE TO IRONY: One of the more useful ways to cleave the world into halves is to split people into a group A that is suspicious of their own brain and a group B that is not. I'm in the former group, thus all the numbers and systematization and so on. You could add a third group of people who are suspicious of other people's brains but not their own, but they seem like a subset of group B with particularly frustrating arguments. Apparently this is a post in which I dispense personal philosophy unrelated to its relevance.I think Brian is close to correct in his assessment here, but misses the crucial dimension on which people differentiate: the willingness to defer to the knowledge of others. What makes group A suspicious of their own brain also makes them suspicious of other peoples' brains, and therefore unwilling to believe anything without a confluence of opinions or objective(ish) facts--"For with wise council you shall make your war/ and in a multitude of counselors there is victory" as it says in Proverbs.
The alternative is the tendency to accept the conclusion of one's own brain, which includes the tendency to accept the conclusions of others as well. This usually takes the form of a false humility: not being smart enough to have figured something out, or not having devoted the time to a subject, or assuming that someone must know what they're talking about, or that people have a good reason for their actions, becomes a reason to accept someone else's conclusions wholeheartedly. A mechanism along these lines can explain both Paterno ("I figured the people who were nominally my bosses would take care of it") and his apologists ("He must've had a good reason to do what he did, even if I can't come up with one and a neutral interpretation would be massively condemnatory"), a way to avoid responsibility and avoid the charge that one should have taken responsibility anyway.
To be sure, this is not intended to reduce to a simple moral along the lines of "question authority," though, in a pinch, that will do. Instead, I think the Penn State scandal reinforces the idea that being a fully human, functional, moral adult is a full-time occupation: if you are not perpetually worrying over whether you are doing the right thing, or have done enough, then it's a sure sign that you are not.*
*If you are, for example, in a position to get sanctimonious about your own virtue, that's a warning sign.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)