Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Hope your day was filled with food and football.

The World Cup — tradition v. technology

I’m not sure there’s any decent answer here, but the traditions of soccer simply don’t jibe with the realities of modern technology. Pesky stuff like televisions 40 inches and up in most homes, broadcasts to those large TVs in high definition and enough cameras placed around the pitch to capture every moment. Moments like clear goals that are disallowed. Moments like getting to see a diver fall down in writhing agony with no person or object within 15 feet of them. This worked when most everyone, including the one official on the pitch, was following the ball. Modern broadcasts put cameras on all sorts of action away from the ball and major officiating mistakes make the sport look, well, a bit stupid.

And don’t even get me started on hypocrisy of defending the traditions of the sport when actively promoting the tournament as being broadcast in 3D. As a ruling body FIFA has to either put up with ridiculous diving and a plethora of bad calls, or embrace modern technology and what it can do to make the game better. Because those two options are mutually exclusive.

So to get back to my original conjecture, I’m not sure there is a decent answer to tradition versus technology in soccer, but I am pretty sure this is not a workable solution.

From the link:

FIFA will censor World Cup match action being shown on giant screens inside the stadium after replays of Argentina’s disputed first goal against Mexico fueled arguments on the pitch.

Ghana-2, USA-1

The extra thirty minutes exemplified the best and worst of international soccer. The Ghanan goal was a thing of beauty, the subsequent outrageous stalling and diving — and even worse officiating — are the final taste many new potential American fans of the sport are going to take away from an otherwise very good World Cup for the American side. And even though I’d preferred to see USA go on, I think it’s a good thing an African country continues in the first Cup held on the continent.

(And I’m probably more pleased than I ought to be that both France and Italy are already getting home cooking.)

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USA-1, England-1

Solid first effort from the US side and a bit lucky. The story of the game of course is Clint Dempsey’s very soft goal against Robert Green. Fleet Street is going to have a field day with Green, and if England doesn’t make it out of the round robin somehow his life in the UK will never recover.

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The 2010 World Cup ball — here comes the science

I’m getting pretty excited about this year’s World Cup. It’s a fun tournament and a truly international sporting event. There’s already been some controversy over this year’s ball, so how did it perform in the lab? Here’s research from the University of Adelaide.

The release:

Will the new World Cup soccer ball bend?

Physics plays a role in on-ground action

Physics experts at the University of Adelaide believe the new ball created for the 2010 World Cup, called the Jabulani, will play “harder and faster”, bending more unpredictably than its predecessor.

But why? And what will it mean for the game?

“The Jabulani is textured with small ridges and ‘aero grooves’ and represents a radical departure from the ultra-smooth Teamgeist ball, which was used in the last World Cup,” says Professor Derek Leinweber, Head of the School of Chemistry & Physics at the University of Adelaide, who has previously written about and lectured on the aerodynamics of cricket balls, golf balls and the 2006 World Cup soccer ball, the Teamgeist.

Along with student Adrian Kiratidis, who is studying for his Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Physics, Professor Leinweber has been reviewing the physics behind soccer balls and what that means for the Jabulani. Adrian is also a soccer enthusiast.

“While the governing body FIFA has strict regulations on the size and weight of the balls, they have no regulations about the outside surface of the balls,” Professor Leinweber says.

“The Teamgeist was a big departure at the last World Cup. Because it was very smooth – much smoother than a regular soccer ball – it had a tendency to bend more than the conventional ball and drop more suddenly at the end of its trajectory.

“By comparison, the aerodynamic ridges on the Jabulani are likely to create enough turbulence around the ball to sustain its flight longer, and be a faster, harder ball in play.

“The Jabulani is expected to ‘bend’ more for the players than any ball previously encountered. Players are also discovering new opportunities to move the ball in erratic ways, alarming the world’s best goalkeepers. By the time the ball reaches the goalkeeper, the Jabulani will have swerved and dipped, arriving with more power and energy than the Teamgeist.”

University of Adelaide students have also put the new World Cup soccer ball to the test on the soccer field. Based on Professor Leinweber’s theories, they’ve attempted to “bend” the Jabulani and have also kicked the Teamgeist and a regular soccer ball for comparison.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Mine was filled with family, a lot of food, football and a little travel.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving day full of all the “f”s — food, family, fun and football. And if any of those are mutally exclusive in your life, then I hope the bad one’s were avoided.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

McCain’s campaign is flailing

That’s a word I’m reading a lot around the blogosphere right now. Flailing. As in how a drowning person reacts before finally sinking to their death.

What a gift to the Obama camp this week.

To put McCain’s campaign strategy into a football metaphor, the Palin pick was a hail mary pass to salvage a lost game. That toss was returned by the opponent for a pick six. Now further behind McCain tosses another hail mary pass from an even worse position on the scoreboard and game clock. That pass hasn’t landed, but there’s a lot of opposition jerseys around and his receiver slipped down a few yards back.

This is what McCain “suspended” his campaign for? Really?

From the link:

Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.

Now that’s some leadership.

Update — From Ambinder:

The CW in Washington this morning is that McCain’s suggestion for the grand, high-stakes summit meeting was the very thing that caused all of Washington to explode.

True, there was no “deal” — House Republicans were always balking and Speaker Pelosi really wanted House Republicans to pair with House Democrats.

But McCain’s presence in Washington gave voice to House Republicans, deliberately, if Minority Leader Boehner was somehow in cahoots with McCain. That’s not likely — the House caucus never trusted McCain and White House credibility among the GOP is ZERO. Indeed, maybe McCain feels privately duped by Boehner.

Frank Luksa on Cowboys past

Here’s a great column penned by Frank Luksa, longtime Dallas Cowboys beat writer for Metroplex papers. He covers tales from training camps past.

From the link:

Precisely

 

On his first day as the Cowboys’ receivers coach, the meticulous Raymond Berry demonstrated how to run a sideline route to rookies. Berry made his usual precise numbers of steps, cut toward the sideline and landed — 1 foot out of bounds.

 

“The field is too narrow, Tom,” he announced to Coach Landry.

 

“No, Raymond,” Landry said, “we’ve been out here forever.”

 

This was the sixth year the Cowboys had practiced on the same field without complaint, yet Berry instinctively found it out of line.

 

“Either the hashmarks aren’t right or the field is too narrow,” the former Baltimore Colts star receiver insisted. Landry shrugged, called for a tape measure, and field dimensions were plotted to the exact inch.

 

Berry’s sense of precision was validated. The field was 11 inches too narrow.