Passion Play

If you listen to sports pundits, which have proliferated with the sudden boom in sports radio (now you can listen to sports as you trudge your way through the ironically named "rush hour"), you'd think the only thing that mattered in sports is passion.

Not strategy. Not skill. Not injuries. Passion.

This feeling usually occurs with the home team. After all, people invest a great deal of emotion in their home team. It doesn't matter that their starting quarterback may be injured, a key running back is out for the season. They point to some other team, suffering from just as many problems, and say that it's a lack of passion.

I watch tennis. Or at least, I used to.

Since it's an individual sport, you can point to talent as being a key. It doesn't take much to see that when Graf was starting to win big, in the late 80s, she simply hit much harder than most of her opponents. That pace often meant most of her opponents were simply outclassed. Passion would have little to do with it.

And whoever mentions passion when mistakes are made? Somehow, people can't say "they were extremely passionate, but they allowed 3 turnovers, and let them run for 150 yards". Oh, passion is pure, and therefore, anything that leads to failure must simply be a lack of passion.

It's the kind of thing that makes me retch listening to some pundits, because you realize they don't know that much about sports. Sad thing is that the coaches and players also talk about it in this manner. They don't want to admit that they were totally confused on the field, and had no idea what their opponent would do.

But you watch, say, tennis, and you see a player like Roger Federer. He has great groundstrokes, great serve, and can hit amazing shots in difficult positions. Other players simply lack those skills, and so they lack the weapons to hurt Roger when playing tennis.

To be fair, tennis is an individual sport, and football is a team sport, but surely, some talent and skill matters. I was watching the Boise State/Oklahoma game, which had as wild an ending as you could imagine. While Oklahoma had better athletes, several things happened. First, Oklahoma made lots of mistakes and turned the ball over a lot. That may have to do with Boise State, I don't know. But mistakes like that can make pretty good teams look ordinary.

Second, Boise State used trick plays to confuse Oklahoma, so their athletic talent wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming. Of course, trick plays, being what they are, can completely backfire, leaving a team wishing they had tried something more conservative. But when they work, they can work well. They rely on the element of surprise, with an opponent not expecting the trick.

The funny thing is, after the game, everyone said Boise State should be allowed to compete with the big boys, that the guts they had to win the game was enough. But, what if they had lost? What if that 2-point play had failed?

You see, commentators only care about winning and losing. How something is interpreted depends on the final score. Oh, so running back X ran for 150 yards, but the team lost. Or, the team wins. The interpretation in one case is that it's wasted, and in the other, "he carried the team on his back". Unlike, say, fantasy football, where such stats can be judged independently of wins and losses.

Ultimately, while passion may be important, it's also sheer laziness on the pundits part, who don't sit and review game tape, who don't understand strategy, who don't understand illnesses, etc. and only make comments that show why they have a job in a radio booth and not coaching (and honestly, one wonders why they have the radio job too).