Thursday, August 6, 2009
Thinking about the Game: Part 2 (to be continued)
I'm really sorry that I have to write this, only two weeks into the re-boot of the blog. I could give you a list of excuses, some better than others, but suffice to say I'll be missing my target of a Tuesday-Thursay posting schedule this week. I will be putting up another post either tomorrow night or early Sunday afternoon. Again, sorry.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Thinking about the Game: Part 1
Now that I've comfortably settled back into writing on a semi-regular basis, I'll be doing my best to maintain a posting schedule of at least twice a week. Posts will usually appear on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I hope you guys will keep making some time in your busy lives to read my junk.
Like my last post, the idea for this article has been kicking around in my head for a little while now. It's a pretty broad concept, and one post will not be enough to contain all my thoughts on the matter. I expect there to be a second part on Thursday, and then possibly a third part next week.
Game Theory:
Pick a sport that you like. If you are like me, you've probably at least put some passing thought into the strategic aspect of playing the sport of your choice. Growing up, I played a lot of hockey and soccer. Between games, I would sit and think about how they were played. Sometimes my thoughts bordered on the fantastical, but mostly I pondered realistic scenarios. I could draw up creative breakout plays or confounding defensive formations. However, despite my best planning, I always seemed to run up against the same roadblock in implementing my schemes: the players on my teams were never good enough to execute the precisely mapped out instructions. What I discovered was that I was always thinking of strategic execution not in terms of my own skill level, or that of my teammates, but in terms of the skill level of professional athletes. The skill involved in a precision pass, or perfectly timed up-field move, was not always available. At the level at which I wanted to apply my great ideas, they were infeasible.
When I think about how a sport is played, and any viable strategy involved in playing said sport well, I always think in terms of the highest possible level of play. I would never devise a strategy that assumed anything less than perfect play on the part of my opposition. Of course, having never played or coached at a professional level, this may seem odd. In fact, it is almost certainly detrimental to the success of the various teams with which I have been associated. In amateur athletics, the players make mistakes much more readily than professional athletes. Any appropriately tailored strategic approach should probably take this into account.
The Beautiful Game:
Let's follow this idea to its logical conclusion: I think of the professionals, or highest amateur level, as being more representative of any chosen sport than some pick-up game in your local park. This is probably an elitist thought, though I will debate that in the second part of this piece. For me, sports are not as much about the random and the unpredictable, though those things certainly make each individual match more exciting, as they are about exhibiting the limits to which the human body can be pushed in athletic endeavour.
I've played a lot of sports. Most of my childhood was spent either at a sporting event or en route to one (and my parents have the gas bills and mileage on our mini-van to prove it), yet if you asked me today about any of the sports I've played, I will always instinctively begin with talk about the highest level of the game. That doesn't mean that I don't cherish the time I've spent playing; I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. But I do think that I am in the minority in this. I think that most people probably think of their own experience with sport, rather than the game they've watched on t.v when talking about the game itself.
I'll try to tackle why this is, or why I think this is the way it is, in the second installment.
Like my last post, the idea for this article has been kicking around in my head for a little while now. It's a pretty broad concept, and one post will not be enough to contain all my thoughts on the matter. I expect there to be a second part on Thursday, and then possibly a third part next week.
Game Theory:
Pick a sport that you like. If you are like me, you've probably at least put some passing thought into the strategic aspect of playing the sport of your choice. Growing up, I played a lot of hockey and soccer. Between games, I would sit and think about how they were played. Sometimes my thoughts bordered on the fantastical, but mostly I pondered realistic scenarios. I could draw up creative breakout plays or confounding defensive formations. However, despite my best planning, I always seemed to run up against the same roadblock in implementing my schemes: the players on my teams were never good enough to execute the precisely mapped out instructions. What I discovered was that I was always thinking of strategic execution not in terms of my own skill level, or that of my teammates, but in terms of the skill level of professional athletes. The skill involved in a precision pass, or perfectly timed up-field move, was not always available. At the level at which I wanted to apply my great ideas, they were infeasible.
When I think about how a sport is played, and any viable strategy involved in playing said sport well, I always think in terms of the highest possible level of play. I would never devise a strategy that assumed anything less than perfect play on the part of my opposition. Of course, having never played or coached at a professional level, this may seem odd. In fact, it is almost certainly detrimental to the success of the various teams with which I have been associated. In amateur athletics, the players make mistakes much more readily than professional athletes. Any appropriately tailored strategic approach should probably take this into account.
The Beautiful Game:
Let's follow this idea to its logical conclusion: I think of the professionals, or highest amateur level, as being more representative of any chosen sport than some pick-up game in your local park. This is probably an elitist thought, though I will debate that in the second part of this piece. For me, sports are not as much about the random and the unpredictable, though those things certainly make each individual match more exciting, as they are about exhibiting the limits to which the human body can be pushed in athletic endeavour.
I've played a lot of sports. Most of my childhood was spent either at a sporting event or en route to one (and my parents have the gas bills and mileage on our mini-van to prove it), yet if you asked me today about any of the sports I've played, I will always instinctively begin with talk about the highest level of the game. That doesn't mean that I don't cherish the time I've spent playing; I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. But I do think that I am in the minority in this. I think that most people probably think of their own experience with sport, rather than the game they've watched on t.v when talking about the game itself.
I'll try to tackle why this is, or why I think this is the way it is, in the second installment.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
