Category Archives: Sports

Metta World Peace, Chad Ochocinco, World B. Free, and Mark Super Duper!

A couple of years ago, one Ron Artest decided he was going to change his name. Ron Artest might not be a name you recognize unless you watch or are a fan of basketball (NBA). Artest has played for 5 NBA teams (Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets, and currently, Los Angeles Lakers). He’s had a number of accolades during his career, too. The thing that Artest will most be remembered for is what he did in September of 2011 — changed his name to Metta World Peace.

World Peace wasn’t the first athlete to make a wild name change like this. In fact, a few years before World Peace, there was one, Chad Johnson, an NFL receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals who changed his name to Chad Ochocinco. But Ochocinco wasn’t the first, either. There have been many athletes who’ve made name changes that would seem rather odd to some:

  • In 1985, a football player decided he was going to make his nickname more official, so he changed his name from Mark Duper to Mark Super Duper.
  • In 1981, a basketball player by the name of Lloyd B. Free changed his first name to World, making his name World B. Free.
  • In 1971, another basketball player, this one by the name of Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr, decided to change his name. You’ll probably recognize him by the name he chose: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
  • In 1964, a famous boxer by the name of Cassius Clay decided he was going to change his name to Muhammad Ali.

As I said, World Peace and Ochocinco are certainly not the first athletes to change their name. Though, of the athletes I’ve mentioned only Super Duper seems to have made the change for ‘innocuous’ reasons. The other three (and World Peace) were making the change for religious reasons or because they were trying to make a point. There was another basketball player a couple of years ago who made the change so that he would be more accepted by the Japanese people (as he was immigrating there). A baseball player in the 2000s decided that there were one too many “Johan Santana’s,” so he changed his first name to Ervin.

When I first started this post, I expected to find many more athletes who had changed their names for reasons that some people might find strange. Instead, I’ve found a number of athletes who’ve changed their names for reasons that I think most people would think were worthy. In fact, one of my favorite name changes (and one I didn’t know before I started writing this post) comes from Maurice Jones-Drew, a football player:

Maurice Jones’s grandfather, Drew, succeeded in his one goal: to see his grandson play through his first two seasons at UCLA. And after Drew suffered a fatal heart attack at the end of the second game of Maurice’s third season, the younger Jones altered the name on his jersey in tribute.

Know The Rules: Bench-Clearing Brawl at the World Baseball Classic

A couple of weeks ago saw the start of the World Baseball Classic (WBC). This is only the 3rd WBC, but it’s already proving to be quite enjoyable to watch and from what the players say, quite enjoyable to play. The World Baseball Classic is akin to the World Cup (of soccer/football) where countries compete to qualify for (and play in) a tournament against other countries — in baseball. This past weekend, there was a game between Canada and Mexico that erupted into a fistfight. Now, as a baseball player of many years, I can tell you that never have I been in a fistfight on a baseball field. So how did it happen?

In the WBC, there are 4 pools with 4 teams in each pool. Each team plays each other once and the top 2 teams advance. Pretty simple, right? Well, with mathematics, there’s a high probability that there will be a tie for 2nd (or 1st!) and there will need to be tiebreakers to differentiate between teams. The first tiebreaker is head-to-head. Meaning, if Team A and Team B have the same record at the end of the pool play, the winner of the game between those two would advance to the next round. If we included a Team C in that scenario (all three Teams have the same record), then it gets dicey. Let’s also say that Team A beat Team B, Team B beat Team C, and Team C beat Team A. Our first tiebreaker doesn’t work. So, we’ve got to go to the next tiebreaker — run differential (it’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but we’ll just call it this to make it easier). Basically, run differential is just what it sounds like — the difference between the number of runs you scored and the number of runs that were scored against you.

Okay, now that we’ve got the basic understanding of the rules, we can talk about what happened this past weekend. In Pool D of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, Italy beat Mexico in the first game. In the second game, Italy mercy’ed (beat by 10 runs!) Canada. In the third game, Mexico beat the USA. At this point, the standings were: Italy 2-0, Mexico 1-1, Canada 0-1, and USA 0-1. In the fourth game, Canada was to play Mexico. Going into the game, Canada had a -10 run differential because they lost by 10 to Italy. So, if Canada won the game, they knew they were going to have win by a lot (in case that the 2nd tiebreaker came into effect).

Cut to the 9th inning of the game between Canada and the USA. At this point, Canada was winning 9-3. They had the game solidly in hand. The first batter of the inning noticed that there was an opportunity to bunt and make it to first base — so, he did. The 3rd basemen didn’t like this and instructed the pitcher to hit the next batter! Let’s take a step back for a second.

In the way that baseball is normally played (without the imposition of tiebreakers), you wouldn’t a team to try to “run up the score.” Meaning, a player wouldn’t take the advantage that the Canadian player did when he bunted — this is considered ‘bush league.’ So, when the Canadian player bunted to reach first base, the 3rd basemen suggested to the pitcher what would normally be suggested — bean him. Now, I’m not condoning this as a response, but generally, this is how things go in baseball. However, because of the tiebreaker 
rules, Canada wasn’t trying to embarrass Mexico, they were trying to even out their run differential! Herein lies the problem — the Mexican player didn’t know the rules. After the Mexican player beaned the Canadian player, the benches cleared. When the benches cleared, a fist fight erupted.

This whole kerfuffle could have been prevented if the Mexican players knew the rules. I’m not writing this to place blame on the Mexican players for not knowing the rules. This post is meant to highlight what happens when you don’t know the rules of the game. More than that, we can broaden this to not knowing the rules of play (in business, politics, education, etc.). If you’re operating under the assumption that the rules are X, Y, Z, and the rules are actually Cup, Dog, Queen, then you’re probably going to miss something. More than that, when someone does something relating to Dog, you may get pretty upset expecting that the rules were X.

In short: Know the Rules.

The Underhanded Free Throw: An Unnecessary Image Problem

About a month ago, I had a basketball game on in the background while I was working and I heard one of the announcers (Jeff Van Gundy) say something about an underhanded free throw. When I first heard it, I chuckled a little bit and then I thought about it more… why don’t some NBA players should free throws underhanded?

The point of basketball is to score more points than your opponent. If you can be more effective (read: score more) shooting free throws underhanded than you can overhanded, what argument could you possibly make for not shoot underhanded? The only things that come to mind:

1) It’s how we’ve always done it; and

2) It looks “stupid.”

Are there two arguments that are more lacking in substance? “It’s how we’ve always done it,” is the kind of argument that perpetuates a business’s lazy policies on innovation and lead to its eventual demise. “It looks stupid,” is the same kind of defense we can expect from a playground argument.

It turns out, the idea of underhanded free throws is not new. I found this video on YouTube of Rick Barry shooting underhanded free throws and saying how he was once talking to Shaquille O’Neal (one of the better players to play basketball, but one of the “not-so-good” free throw shooters) about shooting free throws underhanded:

So, if Rick Barry, one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history can shoot free throws underhanded, what’s stopping everyone else?

The Endowment Effect – Yours Isn’t Always Better: List of Biases in Judgment and Decision-Making, Part 3

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the pitfalls of the sunk cost fallacy. Last week I alerted you to the bias of loss aversion. Since I mentioned the endowment effect last week, I thought it’d be good to cover it sooner rather than later, so this week, we’ll look at the endowment effect.

The endowment effect can be tricky in that if it’s not described in the right way, it’s likely to be misinterpreted. In short, it means that people want more money for something than they’d be willing to pay for it. Put differently: we overvalue that which we own. You could think of a simple example of this through the course of a negotiation. When negotiation with someone, we’ll probably overvalue what we bring to the table. Someone may offer you $50 for your 25-year old keyboard (piano), but you think it’s worth at least $75. Barring any outside appraisal, the endowment effect is likely at play here.

Now here’s where it might get a little confusing, so bear with me: one of the possible explanations for the endowment effect is that humans are loss-averse. Remember loss aversion from last week? The idea that we’d rather avoid losses than reap rewards. If we apply this knowledge to our example above, let’s say that the piano is actually worth $35, but you want $75, and you’re being offered $50. Because humans are loss-averse, it’s causing you to suffer from the endowment effect, which is causing you to overestimate the value of the piano. As a result, you’re forgoing a $15 gain, given the current value of the piano and the price you’re being offered.

Let’s look at another example, this time, from sports. Often times, general managers have their eye on certain players. They believe this player is going to fill the void that their team has and if they could only sign that one player, all of their troubles would be solved. Throughout the courtship of said player, the general manager is already imagining that the player is part of their team. In so doing, this general manager is likely to end up overpaying for the player. Why? Because of the endowment effect. The general manager feels that the player they’re about to acquire is already theirs and so not acquiring the player would be like losing the player. And because they already imagine the player to be on their team, they’re going to overvalue the player as a result of the endowment effect.

Though this example comes from sports, we can see the skeleton of it and apply it to just about any situation where someone “wants” something and has already imagined it as their own.

Before we get into some ways of avoiding the endowment effect, I want to make sure that I convey the point that the endowment effect applies to more than just things. Another way of looking at it is your customers (if you own a business). It’s never easy to fire a customer, but we’ve learned — sometimes — it must be done. As you might imagine, it can be quite hard to fire a customer because — among other reasons — we tend to overvalue that customer.

Ways for Avoiding the Endowment Effect

1) Am I emotional?

A seemingly obvious way to avoid the endowment effect is assessing whether our emotions are involved. Don’t get me wrong, emotions are a good thing, but they are a surefire way to overvaluing things that you own. That is, if you find yourself overly connected to something, your emotions might be getting in the way.

2) Independent Evaluation

This dovetails nicely with the idea of being unemotional. To guard against succumbing to the endowment effect, be sure to have an independent appraisal of whatever it is that you’re looking to sell of yours. While you’ll still have the final say on what you sell and how much you sell it for, having a second pair of eyes look at your side of the “deal” might help you determine if you’re judgment’s clouded.

3) Empathy

I wasn’t going to include this initially, but after reading the research, it certainly fits. Before I go on, I should say that folks might be confused in that I just suggested asking whether one is emotional and now I’m saying to practice empathy? For those wondering, being emotional is not the same thing as being empathetic. Back to empathy and the endowment effect. In situations where we’re selling something, researchers found there to be an empathy deficit when the endowment effect was present. So, to counter this, you should try to empathize with whom you’re negotiating.

 

Loss Aversion and the Big Picture: List of Biases in Judgment and Decision-Making, Part 2

I think I’m going to make a habit of posting something new to my series on biases in judgment and decision-making every Monday. Last Monday, we looked at sunk costs. Today, we’re going to look at loss aversion.

As much as I can, I’m trying to write about the different biases by themselves. Sunk costs are closely associated with loss aversion, so I could have included it in the first post. Similarly, the endowment effect is closely associated with loss aversion, so I could have wrote about it here. Learning about the biases one at a time may make it easier to focus on that bias for that week. So, without further adieu: loss aversion.

Loss aversion is the idea that we’d rather avoid losses than reap rewards. Put more simply: we’d prefer to not lose something than acquire something. Like we did with the sunk cost fallacy, let’s look at some examples of loss aversion to give us a better understanding of this bias. The implication of loss aversion is that someone who loses $100 or $1000 will lose more satisfaction (or be unhappier) than someone who gains $100 or $1000 will gain satisfaction (or be happier). If we think about a continuum where both of the people in the above example start at 0, the person who loses money will have an higher absolute number (with regard to their satisfaction) than the other person. This is a rather basic example, so let’s look at something a little juicier: golf.

In golf, the difference between winning and losing is sometimes one stroke (or one putt). A short excerpt from Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow:

Every stroke counts in golf, and in professional golf every stroke counts a lot. Failing to make par is a loss, but missing a birdies putt is a foregone gain, not a loss. Pope and Schweitzer reasoned from loss aversion that players would try a little harder when putting for par (to avoid a bogey) than when putting for a birdie. They analyzed more than 2.5 million putts in exquisite detail to test that prediction.

They were right. Whether the putt was easy or hard, at every distance from the hole, the players were more successful when putting for par than for a birdie. The difference in their rate of success when going for par (to avoid a bogey) or for a birdie was 3.6%. This difference is not trivial. Tiger Woods was one of the “participants” in their study. If in his best years Tiger Woods had managed to putt as well for birdies as he did for par, his average tournament score would have improved by one stroke and his earnings by almost $1 million per season. [Emphasis added]

That’s an incredible statistic. With the only difference between putting for par and putting for birdie the fact that one would “lose” a stroke and professional golfers are 3.6% better at putting for par? Wow! As the excerpt said, that accounted for $1 million per season for Tiger Woods in his best years.

Ways for Avoiding Loss Aversion

As with the sunk cost fallacy, one of the most important ways to avoid loss aversion is to recognize it. That is, to know that humans have a tendency for loss aversion is an important first step in not falling into the trap of loss aversion.

1) What’s the big picture?

In our example of golf, that might mean knowing where you are in relation to the other players your competing with in the tournament (rather than where your ball is relation to the hole and what specific stroke you’re about to hit). In business, one might examine a decision about one business unit in relation to the entire company (rather than looking myopically at the one business unit).

2) Am I afraid of losing something?

This may seem like an obvious solution, but it’s pretty important. If before making a decision you can think to yourself (or have your team ask itself), “am I afraid to lose something here?” You might find that you are and it could serve to help you or your company avoid falling into the trap of loss aversion.

3) Do you really expect to never lose anything — ever?

Loss is inevitable. Sometimes, you won’t make that par putt (or that birdie putt). Sometimes, when you negotiate a deal, you won’t get the best deal. Sometimes, the decision to sell that business unit might result in losses somewhere else. If you can come to grips with the fact that every decision you make won’t be perfect and that sometimes you will lose, you may begin to shift your expectations about loss.

Colleges Switching Conferences: Markets in Sports

A few weeks ago, 7 teams in the Big East conference voted to remove their men’s basketball teams from the conference. That’s a lot of teams to leave a conference at one time! Truth be told, I’m not an “avid” fan of college basketball, but I do like to catch some games every now and then and like most people, I always keep an eye on March Madness.

When I first heard the news of this happening, the first thing that came to mind: economics.

I never had an economics professor tell me, ‘it’s simply economics!’ but I certainly imagined one telling me this right along with this piece of news. How is it economics? Well, it’s all about markets. Markets? Yes, markets!

In hearing about this, I suspect that the seven teams that voted to leave the conference were noticing all the other teams that were leaving their conferences (in different sports). Many of those teams were moving conferences because of the possibility of more money. There are certain teams that play in certain markets (think: Big Ten) that are able to make a great deal of money for the networks that carry their games (is there any other conference that has its own TV channel?) This is probably why Nebraska joined the Big Ten and probably why Maryland and Rutgers will be joining in 2014.

So, as 7 of the teams that helped to make up the Big East conference in basketball watched as teams like Nebraska, Boise State, and Rutgers moved conferences, I’m sure that this helped to “light a fire” in motivating the teams in the Big East to consider a move.

~

All that being said, I’m certainly sympathetic to those fans who hate to see these kinds of moves happen. Why? Rivalries are bound to die. In fact, I remember a time when this idea of a team switching conferences ended (or severely hampered!) one of the most famous rivalries in the sport! The Toronto Maple Leafs vs. the Detroit Red Wings.

The Leafs were moved to the Eastern Conference in 1998 and when that happened, the number of times the Leafs and Red Wings played diminished — a lot. I remember being crushed as a kid because Leafs/Red Wings games were a delight to see. Of course, there’s talk of realignment now, which might see the Red Wings/Leafs back in the same conference (or division)!

In looking back at the history, the Leafs did quite a bit of moving around in the 1990s. This was, in part, because the NHL was going through a great deal of change. In fact, with the switch to Eastern and Western Conferences, the Leafs/Red Wings were relegated to the Western Conference, initially, with the understanding that they would (both!) eventually get moved to the Eastern Conference. This change happened in 1993 and five years later, the Leafs did get moved to the East. Although, The Red Wings remain in the Western Conference.

I don’t know if the moving around of teams in college sports is a perfect comparison to those teams being moved around in the NHL, but with rivalries likely to be greatly diminished, I can certainly empathize.

Should PED Users Be Allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame? Old Hoss Radbourn Thinks So

A couple of weeks ago, there was a retweet that came up in my feed from someone I don’t currently follow. As a brief aside: this is another cool thing about Twitter. Even though I don’t follow a person, their tweets may show up if someone else retweets them. The cool part: I get introduced to someone (by way of 140 characters, their Twitter handle, and their Twitter picture), that I wouldn’t have otherwise knew existed.

Anyway, this tweet was from @OldHossRadbourn. For those who don’t know, “Old Hoss” is the nickname for Charles Radbourn who was a MLB pitcher in the late 1800s. Radbourn was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939. He was one of the first 25 players elected to the Hall of Fame. Radbourn passed away before the dawn of the 20th century, so it’s safe to say that the person behind the Twitter account is someone else. The tweet:

Obviously, the person who is behind this account is being sarcastic. In fact, one of the people who replied to this tweet made an even more salient point:

Like Radbourn, Ty Cobb was elected to the Hall of Fame very early on. In fact, Ty Cobb was part of the first class of players elected to the Hall of Fame. A bit of baseball trivia for you: Ty Cobb was elected to the Hall of Fame with a higher percentage of the vote than Babe Ruth (98.23% to 95.13%). While Ty Cobb was probably one of the greatest baseball players — ever — he’s also know for being one of “bad boys” of baseball.

From one of the reviews of a biography of Cobb:

Stump, Ty Cobb’s ghostwriter for the 1961 autobiography My Life in Baseball, fleshes out the story in this bare-knuckle, shocking biography. Born in Georgia in 1886, Cobb began his baseball career with the Detroit Tigers in 1905 and stayed in the big leagues until 1928-all the time hated by his rivals and teammates alike because of his meanness and combativeness. The author portrays the highlights of Cobb’s career: his first batting championship in 1907; his 96 stolen bases in 1915; and his three .400 seasons in 1911, 1912 and 1922. Stump also looks at Cobb’s involvement in game-fixing in 1919, his time as a manager and his activities after retiring. He died in 1961. The most sensational aspects of the book deal with Cobb’s personal life: his mother’s murder of his father, millionaire Cobb’s cheapness (no electricity or telephone in his house), wife beating, alcoholism and racial bigotry.

So, we’ve got meanness/combativeness, game-fixing, wife beating, alcoholism, and racial bigotry. Not exactly the upstanding qualities of a person you’d expect to be elected to a Hall of Fame, right? It’s worth noting that some of the severity of these claims have been challenged, but from what I’ve read/seen, I’m inclined to think that there’s at least some truth to them.

I suppose there’s the argument that Cobb’s transgressions don’t immediately relate to his ability to play the game. That is, those players who have dabbled in Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), are immediately affecting their ability to play the game by using these drugs. I can totally understand that point.

Although, as I look down the list of players who have been suspended for using PEDs, there aren’t more than a handful of players that the casual MLB fan would recognize. Similarly, there are only a handful of all-stars. My point here is that even though players use PEDs, it doesn’t automatically skyrocket them to the top of the list of the best players in baseball. The player still has to play at an extremely high-level and for an extended period of time. No easy feat.

As the 2013 baseball hall of fame balloting starts to wind down (voting closes in January of 2013), there will probably be much ink spilt opposing the inclusion of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and there will probably be much ink spilt supporting their inclusion. I found these two cases, one from the San Jose Mercury and the other from NBCSports to seem well-rounded. In particular, the NBCSports article specifically addresses 3 common arguments you hear in opposition to players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

If I were casting a ballot for the 2013 baseball hall of fame class, I’d almost certainly tick the box for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. The conclusion from the NBCSports article puts it succinctly:

In the final analysis, I hope we can all agree that there is no baseball reason whatsoever to keep Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of the Hall of Fame. Their baseball accomplishments — both those which can be measured by statistics and those which cannot — are so far beyond sufficient for induction that it’s almost laughable to list them.  To oppose their candidacy, then, one must make a moral or ethical case based on their drug use and the voter’s opinion of their character. And that case will almost certainly be made from a great distance and with imperfect information.

You may feel comfortable doing such a thing.  I do not.  And I believe that any Hall of Fame that does not include two of the best players to ever swing a bat or throw a ball, no matter what their flaws, is an utter joke.

The Wisdom of the Crowd Has Spoken: One-Timers It Is!

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post about the top 10 FIFA goals of 2012. In the list, there were a collection of goals, some of which were “one-timers” and some of which were the result of a great deal of individual effort. Well, on Thursday, FIFA highlighted the top 3 vote-getting goals. On the list, there was one goal that was the result of a great deal of individual effort and two goals that were the result of one-timers.

Is that what you expected? Would you have expected more individual effort goals to have been on the list? In looking back at my post, I didn’t say whether I thought one-timers would have more on the list and it wouldn’t really be fair to hazard a “guess” now that the answer is known.

So, I wonder — of the top three goals remaining, which do you think will win? Since there are only three videos, I’ll embed them below.

Here’s the one individual effort goal:

One of the one-timers:

And the other one-timer:

If I had to guess, I think the last one will probably win.

Interestingly, “just hours after FIFA announced its candidates for the 10 best goals of 2012,” there was a goal that some are saying may just be the goal of the century! After watching it, I think you’ll see why:

“Simply stunning” — the sports announcer says. Even the England fans applauded the goal (from a Swedish player). Unfortunately, this goal will not be considered for “best goal of 2012” for FIFA, but they say that it could be considered for best goal of 2013. I wonder what the betting line in Vegas is for this winning best goal of 2013. . .

Confessions of a Toronto Blue Jays Fan: So This is what it Feels Like to be a Yankees or Red Sox Fan

This past week has been momentous. Absolutely momentous. Okay, maybe I’m being a tad hyperbolic, but it’s been an exciting week for the Toronto Blue Jays (and their fans). This past week, the Toronto Blue Jays made the biggest trade in franchise history:

Going to the Miami Marlins

Coming to the Toronto Blue Jays

  • Josh Johnson (SP)
  • Mark Buehrle (SP)
  • José Reyes (SS)
  • Emilio Bonifacio (UT)
  • John Buck (C)
  • $4 million

This was a huge deal. Not only did a number of players change hands, but a number of marquee players. Reyes is a 4-time all-star and NL batting champion from 2011. Buehrle is a 4-time all-star. Johnson is a 2-time all-star. Buck is a 1-time all-star. Both Alvarez and Hechavarria are two prospects that were expected to lead the Blue Jays over the next decade. This trade will certainly solidify the Blue Jays’ prospects of making the playoffs in 2013.

Not only did the Blue Jays make a splash with this huge deal, they also signed a couple of players to fill a few holes. They signed Macier Izturis who can play all the infield positions and Melky Cabrera who was an all-star this year and the all-star MVP this year.

There are a ton of things going well for Toronto Blue Jays’ fans. Having been born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, I’ve certainly followed the Blue Jays quite a bit, especially because growing up, baseball was my favorite sport. I loved the game, so naturally, I was interested in watching the professionals, too. I can remember back to 1992/1993 (when the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series) — it was glorious. Those two teams were stacked with talent. In fact, leading up to the 1992 season, the Blue Jays made a very big trade to acquire to cornerstones of those championship teams. Many are comparing the trade I described above to that trade.

The number of deals (and the size of the deals, with regard to money), are not something that you usually see from the Blue Jays in the offseason. The Blue Jays usually have a very low-key offseason, picking up a few players here and there. I always remember the Blue Jays taking a more “Moneyball” approach. Part of this has to do with the size of the payroll. The only time I can remember the Jays spending a great deal of money in the offseason was during those two World Series years I described above.

There is no salary cap in baseball, so teams are allowed to spend as much as they want. As a result, you find the bigger marquee teams (like the Yankees and the Red Sox) able to spend more. (Though, there might be a chicken and egg problem here.) That’s why I’ve titled this post the way that I have. There haven’t been many times in Blue Jays’ history when they’ve spent this much in the offseason. As a result, I would imagine that this is what it feels like to be a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan. Fans of these teams — I suspect — have become accustomed to their team spending a great deal of money in the offseason to keep them competitive.

~

Only time will tell if the success of the Reyes, Johnson, and Buehrle can equal the sucess of Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter. I, and most of Canada, most certainly hope that it will.

 

Which Type of [Soccer] Goal Do You Prefer: Individual Effort or One-Timers?

[Editor’s note: I didn’t realize that I was missing an ‘R’ in the title until after this post was already published. As a result, the permalink to this page does not include an ‘R’ in “one-timer,” but the title now does.]

First, I want to recognize that most of the world refers to “soccer” as football and I respect that. Since I’ve grown up in the West, I’m still used to calling it soccer. With that out of the way, I thought I would ask all of you which kind of “goal” you prefer: goals that required a great deal of individual effort or goals that were the result of one-timers.

Right now, FIFA is hosting a poll to help select the “favourite” goal of 2012. I put favourite in quotes not because of the spelling, but because I think it’s important to name the measure by which these goals are being voted. I re-read the paragraph a couple of times to make sure that it wasn’t referred to as the “best” goal or the most “athletic” goal or something else like that.

So, after watching the 10 goals, I noticed a bit of a divide. About half of the goals seemed to happen as a result of a great deal of individual effort. Similarly, about half of the goals seemed to happen as a result of a one-timer. The voting closes on November 29, 2012. There are a number of confounding variables here (the first of which would be the number of “fans” for a given team or a given player), but I think it’ll be fun to see which goals make the top 3. It’s not specifically stated when, but after the voting closes on the first poll, at some point, FIFA will re-post the three goals that earned the most votes. We could say that if there are two goals that are one-timers, fans prefer one-timers and if there are two goals that are “individual effort,” then fans prefer individual effort.

Again, this is not scientific, but I think it’ll be fun. Let me know in the comments — which kinds of goals do you think will have more votes?

It didn’t seem necessary (or right) to embed all 10 of the goals on this post. So, if you’re interested, head on over to the FIFA page to check them out.