Tag: #SplainingSports

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Getting in the Game

(Clockwise, left): Sha’Carri Richardson, Ryan Crouse, Colin Duffy, and Jess Davis going to Paris. Photos from AP, olympics.com, msn.com, and USAPenathlon.

NBC is marketing their end-of-June Road to Paris coverage of the swimming, sprinting, and gymnastics USA Olympics Trials by calling it “the toughest team” to make. It’s probably true. But not in the way that they mean. Some slots on Team USA are extremely hard to make. Some are under the glare of some very bright spotlights. If you, budding Olympic athlete, participate in one of the marquee sports for U.S. on prime time, then you have to do your sport while everyone’s watching, and with cameras shoved in your face.

But there are 48 sports, with 329 separate events, scheduled for the Summer Games. Once you factor out swimming, track and field, gymnastics, and basketball–the sports that are talked about incessantly–that leaves 44 more. It can also be hard to be one of the best in the world in a discipline that garners almost no attention and little support. What if you’re on a U.S. team that is going for a four-peat and no one outside your sport even knows that it’s played? Or worse–what if you have no chance of medaling? And the only people watching you qualify share your last name because they’re you’re family? That might be just as tough.

Suppose you’re really popular *coff Caitlin Clark* but you don’t get a slot. Don’t the teams just choose whoever they like? it’s not that simple. There are rules for who gets to compete.

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Good for Basketball

Steph Curry & Sabrina Ionescu competing in an NBA Competition. Photo from SportingNews.

The Battle of the Sexes is over. That is, we have reached the point where women and men might compete against each other and both be taken seriously. Where a woman might break a man’s record, a man might beat a woman only by the skin of his teeth, where everyone might watch the contest and come away thinking–that was fun! that was competitive! That was No Joke.

Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu went head to head in a 3 point basketball contest last night as part of the NBA All-Star weekend. Steph won. Steph “edged” Sabrina, as some headlines carefully point out. But NBA fans were “in awe” of both shooters, which is where this ought to be.

Sabrina imitated Steph after beating his record.

Who Are These People?

In case you don’t follow basketball, let me fill in a few of the blanks. Steph Curry is the greatest shooter in basketball history–at least according to Golden State Warriors announcers and fans like me. Steph already passed the NBA all-time 3-point leader (Ray Allen) years ago. He’s 25% ahead of that record. And he’s still playing.

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Too Much Games, Not Enough Sports

I hate to be a cranky ol’ lady, but I’m getting kind of tired of all the sports with so little sports. There’s too much talking about nothing, too much wagering on nothing, and too many things to watch, when there’s even professional tag.

Yappin’ Heads

I was at the gym, putting on my swimsuit, which is a bit time-consuming, so I had a good solid seven minutes to listen unwillingly to the pontificating talking head on the sports channel. He was talking about the poll of college football teams and commenting on the rankings and how they might change depending on who won which game.

Now, I gotta be honest. I don’t care. I went to Cal, whose football team’s goal is to beat Stanford, and that’s that. I went to Chicago, where they had no football team–I don’t even think we had a mascot, did we? (Actually, we did. It’s the phoenix. Of course, the Nobel Prize University would have a f’ing cerebral mascot! )

Still, suppose I did care. Suppose my team was one of those in those rankings or I followed college football. The guy went on for SEVEN MINUTES about these rankings in the following manner:

Now, this choice of ‘Bama being #7 is an interesting choice. Kind of a surprise there. I would have thought maybe higher. But here’s how, if ‘Bama doesn’t beat Oregon in the Viagra Big 13 Championship tomorrow, you’re going to wonder why they made this choice. On the other hand, maybe ‘Bama will win. It’s hard to say. It’s an interesting one. Now on this next one….

What the hell is he talking about? It is already stupid that there is a “ranking,” where numbers are chosen almost at random by an anonymous group of people, and it’s already stupid that they’re spending so much time talking about it. But if you’re going to analyze something, then analyze it.

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