Tag: an englishman abroad

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD WANTS TO CHANGE THE RULES

Challenging the norms of another country’s national sports is always asking for trouble.  But the weekend’s Patriots versus Chiefs championship game ended on such a note of anti-climax that it cannot go unremarked.  The way in which tied matches are decided in over-time does no justice to the talent in the game.

The stakes were heightened by the star quarterbacks on each side.  Legendary, multiple Super Bowl ring winner Tom Brady against young gun, superstar Patrick Mahomes.  The sherrif was in town and the kid was itching for a fight.

It was an attritional game with flashes of brilliance on all sides which is everything you could hope for.  The two slugged it out toe to toe for four quarters and with just ten seconds left in the game the Chiefs tied the scores.  High drama to be followed by total disatisfaction that left a new observer of the game cold.

The method of settling the game is that each side gets a possession and the chance to score unless a touchdown is scored by the team with first possession.  If the scores are equal after a possession each it becomes ‘sudden death’ with the next score winning the game.  And the first possession is determined by the toss of a coin. 

The Patriots won the coin toss and marched down the field to score a touchdown.  There was no opportunity for the Chiefs or their quarterback to respond with their own touchdown.  And that is where the problem lies.

Imagine a world heavyweight boxing match where the scores are tied at the end of the allotted twelve rounds.  To decide the fight a coin is tossed and the loser is not allowed to throw a punch for the next three rounds.  If he is knocked down he loses.

Or a tied game in a World Cup Final between Portugal and Argentina.  On the flip of a piece of metal, it is decided that Messi can’t play in the first half of extra-time and if Portugal score the game is over.  As Ronaldo wheels to celebrate his success the sight of the world’s other greatest player on the sidelines would be heartbreaking.

Defence may win championships but most fans clamour for the thrill of creative players doing amazing things.  They want the joy of enterprise and the jubilation of scoring.  To have a system where one side can be deprived of that makes little sense.

It’s even worse in a game which is a series of set-pieces and where first-mover advantage is in favour of the team in possession.  Alex Lalas noted that a free-kick in soccer is ‘probably the closest thing we have to American football’.  An increasing number of goals in soccer are coming from set-plays as coaches understand the advantage it gives them in a game which is otherwise almost entirely random.   

This advantage in American Football is borne out by the statistics.  According to Football Outsiders statistics Drive Success Rate (DSR), which measures the percentage of down series that result in a first down or touchdown, no team is successful less than 60% of the time.   In 2018 the Patriots had a season DSR of 73.9% and the Chiefs a DSR of 80%.

In short, you would expect the Patriots to complete a first down most of the time they are in possession.   And some excellent statistical work by Brian Burke indicates that, wherever on the field a drive starts it is more likely to end in a touchdown than a field goal.  None of this takes away from the quality of the Patriots’ execution in a pressure situation but it shows how the balance of probability adds up.

But the point is that the Chiefs did not get a chance to respond which short-changed the paying public.  I am told that before a rule change it was even worse, with only a field goal being needed to win in overtime. It’s a version of the dreaded ‘golden goal’ tried in soccer until being dropped in 2004 – I like to think because rule-makers realised it was dumb.

In every sport I can think of, where a definitive result is necessary, the teams battle it out on a blow for blow basis until the end.  Baseball can go on for hours and hours and innings after innings.  Football has resorted to penalty shoot-outs which at least equalises the pressures and skill levels of the teams.

And that is probably where American Football should go.  Maybe they give each side two ‘mini-quarters’ of, say, three minutes, with no time-outs, to score.  Once they score, a field goal or touchdown, or lose possession they hand the ball over to the opposition.  If the scores are level at the end of that, the game goes to field goal kicking of increasing lengths until one misses while the other scores.

Or they could simply move to the NCAA college rules where each team is, in succession and with no time limit, given the ball on the 25 yard line. After the first team completes its drive with a score or turnover, the opposing team has the same opportunity. If the teams are still tied after the second team’s possession, they must play another period until a winner emerges.

Neither is perfect but both mean that each side has an equal chance to win.  The game is eventually settled on a test of skill rather than fortune.  And the tension would be unbearable to the very end.  Perfect.

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD AND THE MUSIC OF THE 1970s

The arrival of my vinyl records in San Diego after several years in storage reminded me that the 1970s has a good claim to be the most dynamic, diverse and distinctive periods in music history.  It’s difficult to explain to Americans what the UK was like in the era of the three-day week, mass industrial pickets, two elections in a year and a bail out from the IMF. For teenagers it was a time of entertainment poverty with just three TV channels, pocket money running to one single a fortnight and the Odeon cinema chain offering lumpy seats and tacky floors.

The great British music wave of the 1960s had sold out with the Beatles and the Stones leading the pursuit of the mighty dollar, then Led Zeppelin and the Who following in hot pursuit.  Eric Clapton, once the blues guitar ‘God’ of Islington graffiti legend, was pursuing heroin, alcohol and Patti Boyd.  And the dubious home-grown ‘folk rock’ was as derivative and limp as any movement spearheaded by a band called Fairport Convention could be.

The US musical response to Vietnam and Watergate was Album Oriented Rock (AOR), with noted DJ “Kid Leo” Travagliante confirming in 1975, ‘the emphasis is shifting back to entertainment instead of being ‘relevant”. But the intersection of social circumstances, lack of commercial radio and the need to re-find a musical identity made the UK more fertile territory for invention.  Gender identity, feminism, anti-racism and social justice became the battlegrounds with music providing the soundtrack.

In the early 1970s ‘glam rock’ may have looked like an effort to put tinsel on the increasingly sputtering and stalling UK economy.  But its glimpse of gender fluidity and theatrics opened a door which could never be closed.  The Sweet, Slade, Marc Bolan didn’t make it across the Atlantic but without them there might have been no global behemoths like Bowie, Queen or Elton John.

With a starting output of seven albums David Bowie bestrode the decade like a colussus.  He started 1971 wearing a dress on the Marlene Dietrich influenced cover of Hunky Dory, occupied, the bodies of Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane, then became the Thin White Duke.  And he still had time to complete his Berlin trilogy and offer us Sound and Vision, Heroes and Boys Keep Swinging.

Bowie voguing for the cover of Hunky Dory 

Queen was formed in 1970 with their first top ten single Seven Seas of Rye hitting the top ten in 1974. Surely, one of the greatest places in music history must have been Montreux in 1981 as Bowie and Mercury collaborated and competed to produce Under Pressure.  Bowie’s judgement, and status as the coolest person on the planet, was re-confirmed when Coldplay sent him their best effort and suggested collaboration – he declined with the line ‘it’s not a very good song, is it’.

The 1970s was the musical decade where women moved decisively, both individually and collectively, from lead singers to leaders of the gang.  Fictional, all-female rock band, The Carrie Nations, had to be created for the 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and Suzie Quatro, despite her long-term garage band pedigree, was an oddity at the start of the decade. But by 1979 Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sue and Chrissie Hynde reflected the changed circumstances  

And in terms of feminist anthems and icons it is hard to get beyond Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs.  Mixed race (Somali and Scottish), dental-braces and bipolar might have seemed unpromising material when she started her own punk band at the age of 18.  But Oh Bondage Up Yours was a primal response to the challenge that ‘some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard’. 

Poly Styrene was given the space to perform by the musical equivalent of Martin Luther hammering his 95 theses to the castle door in Wittenberg.  Punk was born in 1976, a year when inflation hit 24%, Britain went cap in hand for a bail out from the International Monetary Fund, and youth unemployment was rampant.  The musical opposition was the nurdling, self-indulgent prog-rock of ELP, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull and the attitude was reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s response, in the Wild Ones (1953) to the question “What are you rebelling against?” – “whadda you got?”.

Punk may have borrowed from the riffs and attitudes of the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop but, perhaps because the UK is a small island, its musical and social influence was electrifying.  It defined the schism between the baby boomers and Generation-X, injected energy into a moribund music industry and opened the door for individuality.  It’s inclusivity included the ska revival, reggae’s rise and opened the door for everybody to sing Glad to Be Gay in pubs, on marches and at parties. 

But everything that has ever been written about punk can be ignored.  Just find an old-fashionedrecord player, turn it to maximum volume and play Pretty Vacant, followed by White Riot and Oh Bondage Up Yours.  Look at contemporary pictures of skinheads, right wing thugs and teddy boys trying to beat the crap out of bondage-trousered, spike haired, spotty kids.

That is the sound and vision of the new order replacing the old sensibilities.  It’s also the look ofyoung people standing up against racism and social injustice while being scorned by their Government and frowned on by their parents.  The disempowerment of what had become known as the blank generation was converted into a belief that chutzpah and energywere enough to make a difference.

Even as I spin the vinyl I realise that music alone never makes a difference and that youth movements are rapidly appropriated bycorporate interests.  But for a brief period the youth of the UK took control, in a way that encouraged and celebrated diversity, valued integrity and effort above virtuosity, and changed the direction of travel.  Order was eventually restored but only after new icons and values had crept through the gaps.