Americans and Sports


I'll be honest, the draft thing sounds like it would fuck the whole sport up. I mean, if you've got teams wanting to lose later in the season to improve their draft pick, surely the winners lose legitimacy because they might have played against sides wanting to lose? If you're unlucky and play sides with something to play for later on you're more likely not to win. I find it annoying if there's a title race in football and a team plays someone with nothing to play for at the end of the season, but at least they aren't actively wanting to lose!
 
I'll be honest, the draft thing sounds like it would fuck the whole sport up. I mean, if you've got teams wanting to lose later in the season to improve their draft pick, surely the winners lose legitimacy because they might have played against sides wanting to lose? If you're unlucky and play sides with something to play for later on you're more likely not to win. I find it annoying if there's a title race in football and a team plays someone with nothing to play for at the end of the season, but at least they aren't actively wanting to lose!

Its a reasonable point. It gets mitigated a bit by the emphasis on championships being won through playoffs. The NBA and NHL also have a weighted lottery for the top pick so all you'd get from truly tanking a particular game is a slightly better chance at winning the lottery. The tanking is probably at its worst in the NFL, but even there, the people on the field are still probably trying to win, a lot of them aren't likely to be around for the full rebuild anyway. But you might get orders to the coaching staff to play certain people over others.
 
Plus the schedule for a lower finishing team is easier the following year.
Not sure that's true mind. You play everyone in your division twice and then are paired with a division in the same conference and one in the opposing conference and play them each once. That only leaves 2 games to factor in finishing positions:

 
Not sure that's true mind. You play everyone in your division twice and then are paired with a division in the same conference and one in the opposing conference and play them each once. That only leaves 2 games to factor in finishing positions:

Even then teams change so much year to year it's not uncommon teams can finish bottom of their division and then win it the next season.

With this new 17 year schedule there is an extra game against a same placed team like.
 
I'll be honest, the draft thing sounds like it would fuck the whole sport up. I mean, if you've got teams wanting to lose later in the season to improve their draft pick, surely the winners lose legitimacy because they might have played against sides wanting to lose? If you're unlucky and play sides with something to play for later on you're more likely not to win. I find it annoying if there's a title race in football and a team plays someone with nothing to play for at the end of the season, but at least they aren't actively wanting to lose!
There’s a hint of that with Spanish football.
Goal Difference doesn’t exist. Instead they have “head to head”. So if a struggling team have Barca or Real or Atletico a few days before they play another struggler the second game has to be their priority. Putting bodies on the line to limit their loss to 0-2 instead of 0-5 against the pig boys is futile as those extra three goals will nivver matter.
The title winners lose a bit of legitimacy in comparison with GD decided leagues and they’re certainly nivver gonna push to change to a system that may backfire on them at worst and make their job a bit harder at best.
 
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Always find the playoff situation strange when you don't play everyone during the season, you're in separate divisions, and some of the extra games are based on an arbitrary strength of schedule, when you don't really know how good a team is going to be year on year. You can be in a very competitive division, have a tough schedule, just miss out, but then someone who wins a rubbish division gets into the playoffs ahead of you.

Also college sports. Obviously there are way too many teams to play everyone, but it's always a bit strange when the standings, to a degree, are based on opinion - so you get the arguments every year about who should be in the top 4.
 
I'll be honest, the draft thing sounds like it would fuck the whole sport up. I mean, if you've got teams wanting to lose later in the season to improve their draft pick, surely the winners lose legitimacy because they might have played against sides wanting to lose? If you're unlucky and play sides with something to play for later on you're more likely not to win. I find it annoying if there's a title race in football and a team plays someone with nothing to play for at the end of the season, but at least they aren't actively wanting to lose!

You would be surprised at the wanting to lose thing for the draft..last season the Jets were the number one pick and they went and won at the Rams..a game on paper they should never had won..in 1986 the Colts were first pick..that years star draft pick was QB Vinny Testaverde..the Colts won their last three games and the number one pick went to Tampa Bay.
 
You would be surprised at the wanting to lose thing for the draft..last season the Jets were the number one pick and they went and won at the Rams..a game on paper they should never had won..in 1986 the Colts were first pick..that years star draft pick was QB Vinny Testaverde..the Colts won their last three games and the number one pick went to Tampa Bay.

The Colts got lucky. In the NFL, Testaverde was way out of his depth. He had a career of sorts, but it was hardly stellar.
 
Was at nfl at Wembley and there was a lad behind me said he had spent about 5k to come over.

He was as passionate as anyone I've seen at a football match.
Went to the Giants game at Twickenham and was drinking with some fans after. They'd come over from NY for the week. Had Giants season tickets. Wouldn't let us buy a drink all night.
I assume they were minted
 
They are very common. For a lot of NFL teams, and even a handful of NBA and NHL teams, single-game tickets are very difficult to get. When the Vancouver Canucks were good a decade ago, 85 or 90 percent of the crowd was season tickets, and the signal game tickets for the whole season went on sale in early October and would be gone within a few hours.

I have season tickets for the Vancouver MLS lot, a path I started down when they were in the equivalent of the second division and I bought a 5-game pack so I had decent seats for Sunderland visiting about 15 years ago.
I was at the Vancouver game,stayed in Gas town for 3 nights.
 

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