Andrew W. Ishak | Ph.D. candidate in Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin » Sports

When Complaining Gets Tiresome

Andrew — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:02:37 +0000

I do more than my fair share of complaining, especially with regards to college football–heck, I did some more of it last night on my Alabama friend’s Facebook status, which is never a good idea. I also read a lot of complaints (again, about college football) in the form of articles, tweets, blogposts, etcetera. And by complaints, I don’t mean whining (although there is plenty of whining going on); I mean the expression of valid frustrations that we want to see changed.

But sometimes complaining gets tiresome. We start to repeat the same arguments, and we have to move past that and start offering tangible ideas. This is something I tried to do with the BCS by offering a simple, practical playoff solution, which I have since updated a few times when it made sense to do so. Of course I’m just a guy with a blog readership of about 7 people, so I’m always happy when I read something mainstream that pushes a sensible idea along.

An article in New York Times Magazine from last Friday lays out a five-point plan for fixing some of the problems with college football. I liked the article–and I’m linking it here–because it demonstrates a simple, doable, practical plan for considering college football players to be employees.

There are five elements to my plan. The first is a modified free-market approach to recruiting college players. Instead of sweet-talking recruits, college coaches will instead offer athletes real contracts, just as professional teams do. One school might think a star halfback is worth $40,000 a year; another might think he’s worth $60,000. When the player chooses a school, money will inevitably be part of the equation. For both coaches and players, sweet-talking will take a back seat to clear-eyed financial calculations.

The second element is a salary cap for every team, along with a minimum annual salary for every scholarship athlete. The salary caps I have in mind are pretty low, all things considered: $3 million for the salaries for the football team, and $650,000 for basketball, with a minimum salary of $25,000 per athlete. I would keep the number of basketball scholarships the same, at 13, while reducing the number of football scholarships from 85 to a more reasonable 60, close to the size of N.F.L. rosters. Thus, each football team would spend $1.5 million on the minimum salaries, and have the rest to attract star players.

You can read the rest of it at the link above. It’s a good read. And it’s especially good at moving the conversation past “this system sucks” to “here is the plan.”

Combine athlete compensation with a reasonable postseason, and we’re getting somewhere.

Your New Defensive Coordinator for Texas: Me.

Andrew — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:08:05 +0000

Great principles in defensive coaching

(Scroll down for amazing defensive schemes.)

One of my patented defensive schemes. Scroll all the way down for more.

UPDATE: I have officially applied for the position.

December 13, 2010

Belmont Hall
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712

Dear Director Dodds and search committee,

It is with great enthusiasm that I apply for the position of Defensive Coordinator for football in the athletic department at the University of Texas at Austin. I am currently working towards my doctorate in Organizational Communication at UT. While successful assistant coaches on the BCS level do not traditionally come from the academic side of the university, I hope you find that my background and experience would make me a great fit for your department.

In your job posting, 12 years of college coaching experience is mentioned as a preferred qualification. I believe you will find my 1 season of varsity football to be a suitable alternative. Under the tutelage of Coach Brad Metheany, at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, CA, I held the clipboard that contained plays and formations during games. I was granted the opportunity to call 2 to 3 plays in the fourth quarter during each of our blowout losses, meaning all of our games.

A desire for 7 years of NFL coaching experience is also mentioned in the posting. Indeed, I have logged 100s of hours playing NFL-licensed video games. I currently have a 6-game winning streak over my coworker in John Madden Football for the Sega Genesis, which includes teams such as Los Angeles. I have memorized the playbook, which features more than 3 defensive formations.

This is me referencing Dr. Iverson in a research presentation. Dr. Iverson is the foremost expert on team practice.

One of the essential functions listed in the job posting is “coaching student-athletes in the sport of football.” I am curious about the wording of this function. Will I also be allowed to coach student-athletes in the philosophy of football? What about the metaphor of football? The reason I ask is because two current defensive starters are former students of mine, and they really enjoyed my football metaphors and similes. For example: “Football is like a box of chocolates: the running game sets up the pass.”

I noticed that the hours per week are listed as 40. Work/life balance is very important to me, so it is assuring to hear that college football coaches only work 40 hours per week. I may need to leave early on Fridays for my kickball league; I hope that is okay.

Lastly, I am most excited about the emphasis on practice mentioned in the posting. You will be pleased to know that I am developing a theory of team simulation for my dissertation. It is based on the work of Dr. Allen Iverson, the foremost expert in practice. Please see attached photo. Also, on the next few pages are diagrams of my own defensive formations. They are included for your review.

I look forward to talking more about the position and myself. Thank you for your time and consideration for the opportunity.

Andrew W. Ishak
ishak(at)mail.utexas.edu

Below are some defensive formations that I came up with.

This should work well against the run.

Should be great for 3rd down.

Will work if executed correctly.

Note: someone else can block it, too.

Good for the 4th quarter.

More advanced, but should work.

What is the Question? College Football Ratings 2010 Week 1

Andrew — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:58:54 +0000

Question: Do you think UNC dropped further in the polls this week because of suspensions?
Better question: Should it matter?

Yes and no. My guess is that voters took the suspensions into account when determining how “good”* they think UNC is. But they shouldn’t. Imagine if a great team went 12-0, won their conference championship, and then–God forbid–there was a terrible catastrophe right after game that decimated their roster. They should still play for the championship, yet some voters would move them down in the polls because they are no longer one of the “best” teams in the league.

*I put “good” and “best” in quotes because they are subjective terms in college football, yet somehow they because calcified in the minds of voters. Texas is good. USC is not as good as last year. Washington St is bad. Those terms don’t really mean much at this point because they are guesses. We’ve only seen one game.

In any debate or decision-making process, it’s important to consider the following: what is the question? Here are a variety of questions a voter might ask when deciding which team to put at 2 and which team to put at 3:

Which team is better?
Which team would beat the other team on a neutral field?
Which team deserves it more?
Which team has proven itself?

Look at every other major sport and you’ll find that these questions are irrelevant when determining which teams make the postseason. There are only two questions that matter: how many times have you won and who have you beaten?* In all other sports, only win-loss records matter, and if two teams have the same record, we look at who they have beaten (conference/division/head-to-head records). We don’t care about who we think they’re going to beat, or by how many points a team wins, because that gets away from the point of a competition. It’s fun to prognosticate, it’s fun to run up the score, but only one thing matters. Take it away, Herm:

*Okay, technically soccer cares about goal differential. They also have ties. Just watch the video.

Wins matter. Who you beat matters. So while other people have teams like Florida and Nebraska in their top 10, I have them at 32 and 65, respectively, because they haven’t beaten anyone of consequence yet. Now of course, this argument is somewhat self-destructive after Week 1 because I am using subjective rankings to determine strength of schedule. How do we know that Miami of Ohio is not the second-best team in the country behind Florida? So here’s where I’ll admit that I’m cheating just a little. I use preseason strength of schedule, but only in the first few weeks. Otherwise I’d have 65 teams in first place. My system will stop considering preseason rankings in October because I’ll remove it as a component, but I don’t believe that voters can just forget about it. Anyway, here are my ratings after week 1:

What’s with the head thing?

Andrew — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:52:48 +0000

I used to make a lot of videos with my friends when I was a kid (I guess I still do: here and here) and sometimes we did things that we were conceptually cool but turned out quite poorly.

So maybe you get why I’m showing you this. The video below is from Trinity (MA) University’s baseball team. I don’t quite understand why every single player on the team has to turn their head from somewhere else towards the camera. I’m confused. ONE OF YOU IS GOING TO STRAIN A NECK MUSCLE.

Godzilla Returns

Andrew — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:18:18 +0000

GET HIM! STEAL HIS SOUL!

I’m not a Yankees or Angels fan, but I really enjoyed this picture of Hideki Matsui being welcomed by his ex-teammates to receive his 2009 World Series ring.

Link: LA Times

Oh cool, the Sonics are playing Minneapolis

Andrew — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:13:52 +0000

They're both good at basketball!

If you’re interested in the NBA, you know playoff spots in the West and East still aren’t settled with only a few days to go. If you want to see the odds of each team ending up in various playoff spots, check out this page at Cool Standings. Lakers/Thunder is set, and it looks like the other matchups will be a Texas two-step (Mavs/Spurs), Nuggets/Blazers, and Jazz/Suns. The East has some boring matchups in the first round by comparison.

Cool Standings also has baseball playoff odds and other sports as well. Yes, it’s early for baseball playoff chances, but an A’s fan can dream (50.4 percent!).

If You’re Competitive, You’re Competitive

Andrew — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:55:16 +0000

Tiger planned to tone down the outbursts in competition when he returned to golf this spring:

He called winning golf tournaments “irrelevant.” He talked about finding his “inner peace.” He promised to be less excitable on the golf course, so forget those tantrums and fist pumps.

Let the video below stand as proof that you can say whatever you want about change, but if it’s your personality, any type of competition will bring out the competitor in you (warning: adult language). My favorite part of the video is that he refers to himself in the third person nickname. Drew thinks that’s funny.

Someone make me a t-shirt

Andrew — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:47:41 +0000

A player on my softball team was asking if he had to wear a certain jersey color:

“Another question–what color is our jersey (if any)?

ss”

My response:

“We have a pretty unique jersey style actually. We wear purple shirts airbrushed with our favorite Japanese pop band eating our least favorite fruit-based dessert confection. It is preferred that each member of the band be eating a different confection, but it’s understandable that a shirt like that would be hard to find nowadays for obvious reasons. Feel free to make your own shirt–for example, my homemade jersey has members of Kome Kome Club eating peach tarts.

-Andrew”

CompuDrew final rankings: If only…

Andrew — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:49:56 +0000

Okay, now that my heart has restarted after the Texas/Nebraska game, let’s talk about actual matchups for a playoff. First, let me tell you what I like and don’t like about these matchups: If you won your conference this year and you played reasonably well, you’re in. Conference champions are starred below in the rankings. Only Ohio State (#13) could make an argument that they should be in, but they lost 2 games on what turned out to be an average schedule. Central Michigan, (#28), East Carolina (#42), and Troy (#44) can’t make too much of a case in my opinion.

Here is the only thing I don’t like about my system this year. Alabama beat Florida in what was essentially a playoff game. If my playoff system were in place, they would basically have been playing for seeding and home field advantage, given that they were both ranked so high before the game. So yes, I’ll concede that a playoff system would have diminished that game’s importance (or delayed it until later in the month). But let’s go back to last year for a second: Alabama was ranked #1, Florida was ranked #2, and when Alabama lost they dropped behind Texas, who would have gotten the at-large berth. So in many years, the importance of a #1/#2 matchup would be at the same level as it is in the current system. Some people were actually calling for an SEC rematch had it been a close game, so it’s not out of line in any way to see Florida in the playoffs.

I’ll end with this. Cincy, Boise State, and TCU are getting absolutely ripped off in the current system. They ended their season with no losses. They did not lose a game. And now, they are going to be placed in high-paying consolation games while Texas and Alabama go on to play for the national championship. Since we have to pick two teams in the current system, I do think Texas and Alabama should advance. But we shouldn’t have to pick two teams. Our playoff matchups should be as follows (remember, at-large berth is moved to #5 or lower because they cannot host a game):

#8 Oregon @ #1 Alabama in Tuscaloosa
#7 Georgia Tech @ #2 Texas in Austin
#6 Boise State @ #3 Cincinnati in Cincinnati
#5 Florida @ #4 TCU in Fort Worth

It’s been a fun season, and I look forward to the bowl games. My rankings are below.

(Conference champions are starred. Top 7 would make it, Florida would get the at-large berth.)

Sports vs. Tabloids (link)

Andrew — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:02:42 +0000

In the Wall Street Journal, John Paul Newport compares why we watch sports to why people read tabloids (link):

Sports coverage fundamentally is about documenting effort and celebrating triumph. Yes, fans and commentators will tee off on losing coaches (like Charlie Weis of Notre Dame) or bonehead jocks who underachieve (the New York Knicks). But their disappointment is more or less righteous and pitched against a backdrop of desire for greater things. The payoff moments in sports are the record-setting performance and the come-from-behind victory.

The gossip industry, by contrast, is devoted to sussing out the very worst in human behavior and wallowing in it. Yes, reporters will occasionally don a moony face and intone sentiments such as, “The real losers in this sordid affair are the couple’s children.” But there’s no disguising those reporters’ squirming joy in having got the goods on the couple in the first place. The payoff moments in gossip are the gotcha video (or in today’s modern world, the gotcha text or voice message) and the lurid detail.

Just another reason why I love sports.