Consider a thought experiment for a moment. Say we've walked into the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and are watching the android Data. As part of his studies of the human psyche, he's examining the world of sports and has taken a particular interest in American football. Specifically, in an attempt to improve his leadership abilities, he's trying to figure out what makes a successful coach. To this end, he's constructed a holodeck program to simulate a NFL game. In order to isolate the variable of coaching, he's programmed both teams with identical players.
The difference between the teams? Team A is run by a typical NFL coaching staff, with a head coach (Coach A), position coaches and offensive, defensive and special-teams coordinators. Team B is run by a 30-year old who doesn't have any actual football experience, but has spent hours on end playing every installment of the Madden franchise since its inception and watching every possible NFL game for decades. To make it possible for him to control the entire team, it's programmed in that he sends in his instructions through Madden's "Coach" mode (playcalls, substitutions and timeouts, but no actual control of players on the field), while Team A handles their gameplan in the traditional model. Now, when these two teams face each other in Data's simulation, which would you bet on?
Every bit of common sense would say to go with Team A. They're run by guys who have been there and done that for years. In fact, because they're involved with an NFL team, these guys have been selected as some of the best coaching talent out there. They work crazy hours and develop elaborate game plans. In short, they're the professionals. Of course most people would take this highly skilled team over a single rank amateur. In fact, most people wouldn't bother running the experiment at all; they'd tell Data it's a foregone conclusion.
One nice thing about computers (and androids), though, is that they evaluate situations based on information and programming instructions, not simple a priori assumptions about common sense. Data would run his program, and I'd bet it would come to a surprising conclusion; namely, Team B winning.
Why would I bet on Team B? I'm not discounting the value of experience; in fact, I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers (which I've written about before), and I largely buy his argument that much of the success we typically credit to indviduals' innate qualities is, in fact, largely due to their experience and circumstances. That's actually what I'm building on here. The 30-year-old running Team B has his own experience, and it happens to be in a very different arena than that of the traditional coaches running Team A. My guess is that it would prove superior.
Perhaps the easiest area to explore this idea in depth is the area of clock management. Joe Posnanski wrote a very interesting piece on the subject today, concluding that "Coaches in the NFL have no idea how to use the clock." He makes a compelling argument that fans understand clock management better than coaches, and I think he comes up with part of the reason why; fans spend more time thinking about the clock than coaches. However, that's only part of the explanation, I think. The key factor is experience.
No one coached more NFL games than George Halas, the legendary coach of the Chicago Bears. He finished with 318 wins, 148 losses and 31 ties in 497 regular-season games. Second all-time in games coached is Don Shula of the Baltimore Colts and Miami Dolphins; he finished with 328 wins, 156 losses and six ties in 490 regular-season games. Using Pro Football Reference to rank coaches by NFL games, no active coach comes even close; the highest-ranked is Tennessee's Jeff Fisher, who's 17th with 136 wins and 110 losses in 246 regular-season games.
Now, think about that for a moment. The only area where you really get to work on clock management is in games. Sure, pre-season games help, and you can do a bit during practices, but there are always so many more pressing things teams are doing in practice, and it's never quite the same environment. Moreover, it's only a fraction of those games (the close ones) where you really have to worry about clock management; it's probably the last thing on a coach's mind when he's either winning or losing by a lot. Even in those games where clock management becomes an issue, an NFL coach is worried about lots of other things as well; keeping his players happy, working with his coordinators, thinking about playcalling and motivating his team. Considering all that, I'd guess that NFL head coaches really haven't had that much experience managing the clock.
What about the coach of Team B, though? It actually wouldn't be that hard for him to surpass Team A in clock management experience. For one thing, Madden offers the option to play shorter quarters, which allows you to get many more games in. The shorter quarters don't affect clock management much, because you still go through the same situations at the end of games. Even if you play with full-length quarters, though, Madden is much shorter than a regular NFL game thanks to a lack of commercial breaks and an ability to call plays quickly. Moreover, in Madden, you can play any number of games in a row in a sitting; in real life, you only get 16 per season (plus any playoff games), and you have to wait a week between each game. Thus, serious Madden gamers like our Team B coach spend much more time actually managing their teams in game situations than real NFL coaches.
Don't quite buy it? Well, consider this. If a Madden gamer played 16 full seasons, he'd have coached 256 regular-season games, ten more games than Fisher. In 31 seasons, he'd pass Shula with 496 games. In 32 seasons, he'd pass Halas with 512 games. 32 seasons is hardly an unreasonable figure; I've played through around 10 in the last six months, and I'm anything but a hardcore Madden user (which our Coach B would be). A casual Madden gamer like myself could hit 32 seasons in three to four years of gaming; a hardcore one could do it much faster. Moreover, Madden has far less distractions than an actual game (no motivational speeches required, no assistants to keep happy, no fans going nuts, no way to argue with refs), so Madden coaches probably spend much more time thinking about clock management than real coaches. Thus, Coach B would have far more experience actually managing the clock than Coach A.
Of course, there's much more to successfully coaching a game than clock management. However, many of the other components are similar. Consider the issue of when to use challenges, another area fans and writers often take NFL coaches to task for. Using the same argument seen above, most Madden users probably have more experience with challenges than head coaches. The same applies for offensive and defensive play selection and audibles. These can be worked on more in practice, so NFL coaches have more experience with them than they with challenges, but they're still very different in a game than they are in practice. Even if we counted all the hours Coach A spent running plays on the practice field (not as many as you might think, as practices also involve a lot of individual drills and small-group situations), though, our hardcore Madden user Coach B would likely still have more experience with playcalling than Coach A. He would have spent more time in game situations, and that gives him a better chance for success.
Now, you can make a case for Coach A if you insist that clock management, challenge management and playcalling in Madden can't be applied to actual football. If they're completely separate things, then Coach A has a distinct experiential advantage. I don't think they are, though. Again, the strongest case can be made in the area of clock management; the clock operates under the same rules in Madden and "real" football, and you can take the same measures to either stop it or keep it running. Challenges and playcalling are a little tougher, but keep in mind that Madden is programmed to operate under the same rules as "real" football, bases its plays on real plays and bases its players on real players. The quality of the simulation has improved over the years, and you could argue that the latest versions give reasonably realistic results in terms of playcalling; frequently, the same offensive plays work against certain defensive sets in both reality and the game.
There's something else that would help Coach B: innovation. As I wrote in my piece on the subject at The Good Point, innovation has always faced an uphill battle in the NFL. Few coaches are willing to really innovate for fear of looking silly; however, once an innovation is discovered, it quickly goes from laughingstock to widely-used strategy (see the Wildcat offence). Those innovations generally aren't that far out there, though; for example, the Wildcat was largely based off the old single-wing offence and was run successfully in college before it was brought to the pros.
The reason we never see anything really bizarre in the NFL is thanks to the backgrounds of the people involved. Most coaches in the NFL have gone through a very similar career arc, starting off as players, then becoming low-level assistants, then coordinators and then head coaches. They may have slightly different schools of thought based on their personalities and the coaches they've worked with (hence the concept of coaching trees), but all those ideas are really just branches of the same tree. You see this in many businesses; people from the same backgrounds tend to approach problems the same way. If you come up with a multi-dimensional business problem involving manufacturing a new device and present it to different groups, accountants will tend to look at it in terms of the costs involved, while research scientists will look at it from the perspective of what can be created and engineers will look at it from a perspective of what's feasible to create. None of these approaches is necessarily right or wrong, and you have to incorporate elements of all of them to find success.
The problem is that the NFL's small group of coaches from similar backgrounds means everyone approaches certain issues in similar ways. (Chris Brown had a good piece on this at Smart Football). There's also the risk of looking silly if you try something radical, which motivates many to stick to the tried-and-tested paths even if they do have other ideas. For example, consider the case of fourth downs. Bill Belichick got plenty of criticism for daring to go for it on fourth-and-two in his own territory this year, even though many of the numbers we have on fourth-down conversion percentages support him. That was a highly unconventional call by NFL standards, but it's still well within the bounds of what is sometimes done; that was late in the game with a short distance to go. What you would never see in today's NFL is a coach who consistently goes for it when faced with fourth down and five yards or less, regardless of field position and time left; that's far enough outside the box that no one would dare to try it for fear of looking silly.
The nice thing about Madden, though, is its judgement is based on results, not aesthetics. I've consistently gone for it on fourth and five or less and found lots of success doing so. You can do plenty of other things that you wouldn't likely see in the NFL too, such as running five-receiver sets on every play or prominently featuring flea-flickers and end-arounds. Madden users have a variety of different backgrounds, and ones very different from the typical NFL coach, plus the game design encourages experimentation and innovation. It also leads to a more statistically-based school of thought; if certain ideas work more often than not, a player will keep using them. Naysayers would argue that these ideas wouldn't work in the NFL, but it's impossible to know because no one has tried. The nature of Madden promotes innovative thinking, though, and that would be yet another advantage for Coach B.
I'm sure this idea still seems reasonably silly to many of you. After all, Madden's just a game, and games by nature are designed for entertainment. However, the increasing realism of the game in recent years has brought it closer to the level of a simulator. There are plenty of other fields where simulators are considered to provide valuable training experience, particularly for pilots and astronauts. Do you think it's really tougher to deliver a useful simulation of football than a simulation of landing an F-14 on a carrier?
Now, I'm not saying we could replace NFL head coaches with Madden gamers and instantly see improvements across the board. There are many areas of football where a current NFL coaching staff like Team A's would have an advantage, particularly in developing players from raw draft picks to seasoned veterans, motivating their players to give it all they have and juggling their players' egos. Over a long period of time, such as a complete season, I think those advantages could nullify Team B's greater expertise in playcalling and clock management. However, for the one game considered in Data's experiment, I'm taking Team B.
The broader question, though, is why can't we have the best of both worlds? What if we kept the current backgrounds of our NFL head coaches, but got them to frequently play Madden and encouraged them to try new strategies? I'm quite sure we'd see them get better at clock management, and I think they would improve as playcallers and innovators as well. At the end of the day, this will probably just remain a hypothetical, but it's an interesting one to consider. Is the way we currently develop coaches the best way to do things, or should we encourage them to take a look at the virtual world? After all, football is just a game.
Showing posts with label deep thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deep thoughts. Show all posts
Monday, January 18, 2010
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
On The Ground: Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio speaks about the recent comment apocalypse
After I wrote my initial post on the commenting apocalypse over at Deadspin, I got an e-mail from site editor A.J. Daulerio stating that Gawker head honcho Nick Denton wasn't involved. I asked Daulerio to elaborate on the rationale behind the move and his wording that seemed to suggest a Gawker Media management conspiracy, and he just got back to me with his responses. They illuminate much of what has gone on so far, so I recommend reading on for the interview if you're at all interested in the situation. I'll have my own thoughts on his comments at the end.
Andrew Bucholtz: "What's the goal behind the process you mentioned [on Sunday]?Reducing the absolute number of commenters and starred commenters, getting rid of certain kinds of lazy comments or jokes, removing people for offensive jokes, or something else completely?"
A.J. Daulerio: "The goal of this bloodbath -- we'll call it that, I guess 30 or so people does constitute a bloodbath -- is to do all of the above. So yes. Did I do it in the most polite, business-like, pr-friendly manner? Not even close. And in hindsight that was probably too dickish. Did I have a little fun with it? Sure. It's still a blog post. But anytime there are changes it results in a certain level of protest. Of course this particular change affects some of the long-time readers, though, and that sucks and I totally understand why they would be upset with me for how I handled it."
A.B.: "What's the reasoning for this?"
A.J.D.: "Because some of the best commenters (in my opinion) on the site were starting to feel a little pushed out and thought the quality of the comments had deteriorated. They volunteered to help rejuvenate it. To be fair, most of the deterioration happened under my editorship. Part of that was due to my insistence that the commenters were their own separate entity and so let's not worry about them. I eased up on the whole "Commenter Manifesto" thing, and told our comment moderator, Pete Gaines (and Rob Iracane before that) to let more people in. The reason for that was, with Facebook Connect already set to launch, it seemed silly to keep certain people out or have them go through a lengthy audition process
if total randoms could just pop in anytime.
A.B.: "How long will this process take?"
A.J.D.: "As long as it takes."
A.B.: "Does Facebook Connect play into this, and if yes, how so?"
A.J.D.: "Not at all."
A.B.: "Sunday night, you wrote, "You will all be subject to unfair scrutiny and I have very little say in the matter." What did you mean by that if Denton isn't involved?"
A.J.D. "As I mentioned up top, this little commenting committee (Or Ninja Squadron Of Doom or whatever they're called) that stepped up would be doing most of the slash-and-burn/de-starring stuff. I asked them to stay anonymous just so they could be objective about it and establish their own system of comment grading. Is it a little creepy and off-putting to do it this way? Sure, but it's worth a shot. And besides, after seeing what Pete and Rob went through in dealing with certain individuals, I think it might make the job a little less of a nuisance and more enjoyable for this crew. Pete did great, even though he was pretty much in charge of thankless cat-herding, and he deserved a lot more of a heads-up than I gave him about how this was all going down. And, no, Nick Denton did not have any involvement in how I handled any of these situations."
A.B.: "Why is this happening now?"
A.J.D.: "It was just time."
Okay, so on to my thoughts. First, thanks to A.J. for taking the time to answer my questions. He's obviously taking a fair bit of flack over this and busy enough as it is, so I certainly appreciate his time.
From his comments, it certainly sounds like this isn't a big Gawker Media plan of the sort I first envisioned. However, it would accomplish a couple of the same goals; it decreases the absolute number of commenters, gets rid of some offensive comments and has people become more careful about their comments, all of which would go along with the idea of decreasing liability.
What's interesting is that this doesn't appear to have any positive economic benefit other then that, though. My initial thinking was that the banhammering would get rid of some of the most set-in-their-ways and the star removal would put everyone on the same tier, opening the door for Facebook commenters to come in and replace the pageviews generated from those dismissed at a lower liability threshold. Daulerio doesn't appear to envision any rapid influx in commenters of any sort, which would appear to hurt the site's traffic.
However, that's not necessarily the case. As I mentioned in the last post, the key advertising metric Gawker Media appears to promote is unique visitors, not pageviews. As website managers know, both often come from different approaches. Many of your pageviews come from the same dedicated cast of regular readers, while your uniques are often driven by a few big posts that get picked up by outside sources and draw readers who have never looked at the site before. Some of them might come back, but they won't read every post when they do. Unique content with a wide appeal works well for bringing in these types, and that has been a Gawker Media focus of late. Thus, a decline in comments and regular readers might not necessarily translate into a decline in revenue if unique visitors go up. Also, as mentioned last time around, good comments can drive traffic as well, and that's both commenting and non-commenting traffic. Daulerio clearly thinks this move will increase the quality of the site's comments; if the general public agrees and more of them read Deadspin as a result, it could work out just fine for them.
Anyway, disregard the economic implications for a moment. They're tough to predict in any case, as they depends on the backlash from commenters, the backlash from readers, how many people stop reading the site and how many new readers drop in, and they don't appear to play a key role in this in Daulerio's mind. He's treating this as a content problem, so let's look at it from that point of view, starting with his comment about why he made this move:
"Some of the best commenters (in my opinion) on the site were starting to feel a little pushed out and thought the quality of the comments had deteriorated. They
volunteered to help rejuvenate it."
Okay, so we've got a few building blocks here. There's a group of commenters Daulerio values, and they become unimpressed with the direction the site's comments are going. Daulerio appears to agree from his comments later in the paragraph about the deterioration occurring thanks to the lessening of commenting standards. These commenters volunteer to start destarring and executing other commenters, and are given the authority to do so. This is reasonably logical; the comments produced by this group are clearly closer to the ideal Daulerio's striving for, so putting them in charge of this process gets rid of those who don't fit that mould at all, keeps those who already fit it and moves the middle group closer to the desired mould. This is one area where the secrecy and lack of firm standards given actually helps, as people will figure out what isn't working by who gets banned and start tailoring their comments to be closer to the desired goal and avoid the banhammer.
There is a fundamental problem with this logic though, as it depends on a certain standard of what's funny and appropriate. It isn't a pure absolute standard, as it's the combination of the standards of the individual members of this "commenting committee" (and presumably Daulerio himself), but it does draw on a like-minded collection of people, which leads to the potential for groupthink. This potential is further increased by simple psychology and politics; in small, powerful groups like this historically, the members have usually found themselves drawing closer together in ideology in order to create definite standards of what is acceptable and what isn't (and make sure they all fall within the acceptable range). Thus, you are quite likely to arrive at a pretty specific idea of what kind of comments you're looking for given this model, resulting in a pretty narrow standard. It becomes black or white; certain ideas and jokes are acceptable, while other ones aren't and there's no middle ground.
The problem is that humour, like so many other things in life and sports, falls into the shades of grey I'm so big on. There's a reason we all have different tastes in it; some of us find Monty Python hilarious, while others prefer Paul Blart or Borat. It's not just personal preference as to which is better, either; a joke might crack one person up but do nothing at all for a second. Humour is not universal, and that's a good thing. We all bring our worldviews and our experiences to it, and that's why we each regard it differently. It does make it very difficult to draw absolute standards as to what's funny, what's acceptable and what isn't, though. That's not to say that Daulerio and co. can't draw such standards; it's their site, so it's up to them to make the rules. It does mean that any strict set of rules (or even just any shared impressions of what kinds of comments are funny) will undoubtedly result in some forms of humour and the commenters who practice them being cast out into the darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
In my mind, that's too bad; not only does it lessen the forms of humour available (and thus the commenters who use them, the readers who laugh at them and the pageviews arising from both), but it results in more groupthink from those who remain. It's often the outliers and the unpopular who challenge our assumptions and expose us to new ideas. You don't usually learn anything from a conversation with a like-minded person. I also don't see why you'd ever want to lessen the amount of commenters on your site (unless they're causing you legal problems or being jerks to others), as that goes against the whole philosophy of Internet writing. On the Internet, you provide content for free to draw eyeballs and clicks to your site. Commenters generally keep their eyeballs there more than anyone else, so they're investing their time in reading your work. You can then sell those stats to advertisers, which rewards you for putting the work together in the end. Essentially telling committed people who would like nothing better than to spend their time on your site to shove off doesn't seem like a great business move to me, and it's not a great move from a content perspective either; who would ever want to write something for as small an audience as possible? We all dream big, but most of us achieve only little; in my mind, we should be grateful for what traffic we get. It's easier to keep that in mind when you run a two-bit blog than a major one, though.
In any case, though, it's not the decision itself that's the most troubling, but rather the process. First there were vague announcements of impending doom, then comments about abusing the privilege and criticism of people for taking it too seriously, and then halfhearted invitations for the banned to try out again, none of which provided any real details on what was going on. In my mind, Daulerio would have been much better off just posting the responses he sent me; they're far more detailed and instructive as to what's going on than any information on the site. To his credit, his comments to me suggest that he'd approach it more constructively if he was to do it again. Still, having secret squads of people covertly execute commenters without public guidelines or explanations doesn't strike me as a particularly productive way to approach the matter.
One final thought on the contrasting views of the importance of the Deadspin commenting community: it means different things to different people. For some, it is just the comments section of a sports blog; for others, it's led to great discussions, joint ventures and real friendships. Neither view is necessarily superior, as there are vast numbers of distinct personalities involved. I'm not going to argue that it's the most important thing in the world, as it clearly isn't. However, one thing I've really picked up on from my time at Queen's is that almost everyone has at least one obscure club, group, forum or other place where they invest a lot of their time, and those connections mean a lot to them; trivializing them is somewhat foolish, as you've probably invested your time in something that seems just as silly to them. The conversations had at Deadspin and friendships formed do mean a lot to significant numbers of people, as can be seen from the comments over at The Rookies' post last night. Maybe Deadspin isn't the best place for that any more, but many of those people have invested a lot of time and effort into promoting the site over the years; writing them off with little explanation and then downplaying their concerns doesn't seem like the wisest strategy to me. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out.
By the way, just to clarify the personal bias involved: I am a Deadspin commenter, but have only been so for a couple of months. I enjoy the site's community and sports discussion, but I don't have a problem with it if they do decide to ban me (they haven't yet); I'm certainly not one of the funnier people there by any means, I'm one of the shorter-tenured members and I definitely don't feel I have any God-given right to display my opinions there. I'm not writing about the issue to try and affect my personal standing there in one way or another; I'm addressing it because it's an interesting topic, because it's relevant to the sports blogosphere, because it fits in with several of my theories about writing, communities and absolutes and because I know a lot of very talented commenters who are affected by it. Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Concerns? Leave them in the comments below, or e-mail me at andrew_bucholtz [at] hotmail.com.
Andrew Bucholtz: "What's the goal behind the process you mentioned [on Sunday]?Reducing the absolute number of commenters and starred commenters, getting rid of certain kinds of lazy comments or jokes, removing people for offensive jokes, or something else completely?"
A.J. Daulerio: "The goal of this bloodbath -- we'll call it that, I guess 30 or so people does constitute a bloodbath -- is to do all of the above. So yes. Did I do it in the most polite, business-like, pr-friendly manner? Not even close. And in hindsight that was probably too dickish. Did I have a little fun with it? Sure. It's still a blog post. But anytime there are changes it results in a certain level of protest. Of course this particular change affects some of the long-time readers, though, and that sucks and I totally understand why they would be upset with me for how I handled it."
A.B.: "What's the reasoning for this?"
A.J.D.: "Because some of the best commenters (in my opinion) on the site were starting to feel a little pushed out and thought the quality of the comments had deteriorated. They volunteered to help rejuvenate it. To be fair, most of the deterioration happened under my editorship. Part of that was due to my insistence that the commenters were their own separate entity and so let's not worry about them. I eased up on the whole "Commenter Manifesto" thing, and told our comment moderator, Pete Gaines (and Rob Iracane before that) to let more people in. The reason for that was, with Facebook Connect already set to launch, it seemed silly to keep certain people out or have them go through a lengthy audition process
if total randoms could just pop in anytime.
A.B.: "How long will this process take?"
A.J.D.: "As long as it takes."
A.B.: "Does Facebook Connect play into this, and if yes, how so?"
A.J.D.: "Not at all."
A.B.: "Sunday night, you wrote, "You will all be subject to unfair scrutiny and I have very little say in the matter." What did you mean by that if Denton isn't involved?"
A.J.D. "As I mentioned up top, this little commenting committee (Or Ninja Squadron Of Doom or whatever they're called) that stepped up would be doing most of the slash-and-burn/de-starring stuff. I asked them to stay anonymous just so they could be objective about it and establish their own system of comment grading. Is it a little creepy and off-putting to do it this way? Sure, but it's worth a shot. And besides, after seeing what Pete and Rob went through in dealing with certain individuals, I think it might make the job a little less of a nuisance and more enjoyable for this crew. Pete did great, even though he was pretty much in charge of thankless cat-herding, and he deserved a lot more of a heads-up than I gave him about how this was all going down. And, no, Nick Denton did not have any involvement in how I handled any of these situations."
A.B.: "Why is this happening now?"
A.J.D.: "It was just time."
Okay, so on to my thoughts. First, thanks to A.J. for taking the time to answer my questions. He's obviously taking a fair bit of flack over this and busy enough as it is, so I certainly appreciate his time.
From his comments, it certainly sounds like this isn't a big Gawker Media plan of the sort I first envisioned. However, it would accomplish a couple of the same goals; it decreases the absolute number of commenters, gets rid of some offensive comments and has people become more careful about their comments, all of which would go along with the idea of decreasing liability.
What's interesting is that this doesn't appear to have any positive economic benefit other then that, though. My initial thinking was that the banhammering would get rid of some of the most set-in-their-ways and the star removal would put everyone on the same tier, opening the door for Facebook commenters to come in and replace the pageviews generated from those dismissed at a lower liability threshold. Daulerio doesn't appear to envision any rapid influx in commenters of any sort, which would appear to hurt the site's traffic.
However, that's not necessarily the case. As I mentioned in the last post, the key advertising metric Gawker Media appears to promote is unique visitors, not pageviews. As website managers know, both often come from different approaches. Many of your pageviews come from the same dedicated cast of regular readers, while your uniques are often driven by a few big posts that get picked up by outside sources and draw readers who have never looked at the site before. Some of them might come back, but they won't read every post when they do. Unique content with a wide appeal works well for bringing in these types, and that has been a Gawker Media focus of late. Thus, a decline in comments and regular readers might not necessarily translate into a decline in revenue if unique visitors go up. Also, as mentioned last time around, good comments can drive traffic as well, and that's both commenting and non-commenting traffic. Daulerio clearly thinks this move will increase the quality of the site's comments; if the general public agrees and more of them read Deadspin as a result, it could work out just fine for them.
Anyway, disregard the economic implications for a moment. They're tough to predict in any case, as they depends on the backlash from commenters, the backlash from readers, how many people stop reading the site and how many new readers drop in, and they don't appear to play a key role in this in Daulerio's mind. He's treating this as a content problem, so let's look at it from that point of view, starting with his comment about why he made this move:
"Some of the best commenters (in my opinion) on the site were starting to feel a little pushed out and thought the quality of the comments had deteriorated. They
volunteered to help rejuvenate it."
Okay, so we've got a few building blocks here. There's a group of commenters Daulerio values, and they become unimpressed with the direction the site's comments are going. Daulerio appears to agree from his comments later in the paragraph about the deterioration occurring thanks to the lessening of commenting standards. These commenters volunteer to start destarring and executing other commenters, and are given the authority to do so. This is reasonably logical; the comments produced by this group are clearly closer to the ideal Daulerio's striving for, so putting them in charge of this process gets rid of those who don't fit that mould at all, keeps those who already fit it and moves the middle group closer to the desired mould. This is one area where the secrecy and lack of firm standards given actually helps, as people will figure out what isn't working by who gets banned and start tailoring their comments to be closer to the desired goal and avoid the banhammer.
There is a fundamental problem with this logic though, as it depends on a certain standard of what's funny and appropriate. It isn't a pure absolute standard, as it's the combination of the standards of the individual members of this "commenting committee" (and presumably Daulerio himself), but it does draw on a like-minded collection of people, which leads to the potential for groupthink. This potential is further increased by simple psychology and politics; in small, powerful groups like this historically, the members have usually found themselves drawing closer together in ideology in order to create definite standards of what is acceptable and what isn't (and make sure they all fall within the acceptable range). Thus, you are quite likely to arrive at a pretty specific idea of what kind of comments you're looking for given this model, resulting in a pretty narrow standard. It becomes black or white; certain ideas and jokes are acceptable, while other ones aren't and there's no middle ground.
The problem is that humour, like so many other things in life and sports, falls into the shades of grey I'm so big on. There's a reason we all have different tastes in it; some of us find Monty Python hilarious, while others prefer Paul Blart or Borat. It's not just personal preference as to which is better, either; a joke might crack one person up but do nothing at all for a second. Humour is not universal, and that's a good thing. We all bring our worldviews and our experiences to it, and that's why we each regard it differently. It does make it very difficult to draw absolute standards as to what's funny, what's acceptable and what isn't, though. That's not to say that Daulerio and co. can't draw such standards; it's their site, so it's up to them to make the rules. It does mean that any strict set of rules (or even just any shared impressions of what kinds of comments are funny) will undoubtedly result in some forms of humour and the commenters who practice them being cast out into the darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
In my mind, that's too bad; not only does it lessen the forms of humour available (and thus the commenters who use them, the readers who laugh at them and the pageviews arising from both), but it results in more groupthink from those who remain. It's often the outliers and the unpopular who challenge our assumptions and expose us to new ideas. You don't usually learn anything from a conversation with a like-minded person. I also don't see why you'd ever want to lessen the amount of commenters on your site (unless they're causing you legal problems or being jerks to others), as that goes against the whole philosophy of Internet writing. On the Internet, you provide content for free to draw eyeballs and clicks to your site. Commenters generally keep their eyeballs there more than anyone else, so they're investing their time in reading your work. You can then sell those stats to advertisers, which rewards you for putting the work together in the end. Essentially telling committed people who would like nothing better than to spend their time on your site to shove off doesn't seem like a great business move to me, and it's not a great move from a content perspective either; who would ever want to write something for as small an audience as possible? We all dream big, but most of us achieve only little; in my mind, we should be grateful for what traffic we get. It's easier to keep that in mind when you run a two-bit blog than a major one, though.
In any case, though, it's not the decision itself that's the most troubling, but rather the process. First there were vague announcements of impending doom, then comments about abusing the privilege and criticism of people for taking it too seriously, and then halfhearted invitations for the banned to try out again, none of which provided any real details on what was going on. In my mind, Daulerio would have been much better off just posting the responses he sent me; they're far more detailed and instructive as to what's going on than any information on the site. To his credit, his comments to me suggest that he'd approach it more constructively if he was to do it again. Still, having secret squads of people covertly execute commenters without public guidelines or explanations doesn't strike me as a particularly productive way to approach the matter.
One final thought on the contrasting views of the importance of the Deadspin commenting community: it means different things to different people. For some, it is just the comments section of a sports blog; for others, it's led to great discussions, joint ventures and real friendships. Neither view is necessarily superior, as there are vast numbers of distinct personalities involved. I'm not going to argue that it's the most important thing in the world, as it clearly isn't. However, one thing I've really picked up on from my time at Queen's is that almost everyone has at least one obscure club, group, forum or other place where they invest a lot of their time, and those connections mean a lot to them; trivializing them is somewhat foolish, as you've probably invested your time in something that seems just as silly to them. The conversations had at Deadspin and friendships formed do mean a lot to significant numbers of people, as can be seen from the comments over at The Rookies' post last night. Maybe Deadspin isn't the best place for that any more, but many of those people have invested a lot of time and effort into promoting the site over the years; writing them off with little explanation and then downplaying their concerns doesn't seem like the wisest strategy to me. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out.
By the way, just to clarify the personal bias involved: I am a Deadspin commenter, but have only been so for a couple of months. I enjoy the site's community and sports discussion, but I don't have a problem with it if they do decide to ban me (they haven't yet); I'm certainly not one of the funnier people there by any means, I'm one of the shorter-tenured members and I definitely don't feel I have any God-given right to display my opinions there. I'm not writing about the issue to try and affect my personal standing there in one way or another; I'm addressing it because it's an interesting topic, because it's relevant to the sports blogosphere, because it fits in with several of my theories about writing, communities and absolutes and because I know a lot of very talented commenters who are affected by it. Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Concerns? Leave them in the comments below, or e-mail me at andrew_bucholtz [at] hotmail.com.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
The charge of the Golden brigade
There are some moments in sports that transcend the usual prose used to describe such encounters, when art, life and competition collide in a surreal mix. Saturday's football game between Queen's and the Ottawa Gee-Gees was one of those moments, at least from this perspective: I've been trying to find the proper way to give it justice for two days now. In the end, there was one poem that kept flashing through my mind high up in the chilly Richardson Stadium press box while watching the Gaels' dream season reduced to ruins on the gridiron below. I present it below, with annotated commentary on its relevance to this occasion.
[The full text of The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Lord Tennyson, can be found here...]
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Much like the famed Light Brigade, the Gaels perhaps came into this game without an idea of what they were truly up against. Yes, the coaches and players said all the right things beforehand ["Have the tables turned?", myself, Queen's Journal: the question mark I added into that title seems like a bloody good idea in retrospect, as today's game showed that the tables haven't changed too much since the 2006 loss]. Even in their guarded comments, though, the confidence came through, and they were right to be confident: they were an 8-0 team playing at home against a 4-4 team that barely stumbled into the playoffs. As I mentioned in my live blog of the game, though, "There are two kinds of 4-4 teams: the mediocre ones who gut out a few wins, and the brilliantly talented but inconsistent ones. Ottawa was always the latter."
That latter group of teams is scary, and it exists across all sports, but especially in football: the small sample size of the regular season and how each game can often turn on a play or two makes it so there isn't often that much difference between a perfect or near-perfect team and a team that just snuck into the playoffs. The ultimate case in point is last year's Super Bowl, where the 14-6 New York Giants knocked off the 18-0 New England Patriots, but there have been plenty of other examples. The 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers are another great case in point; they earned the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs with a 11-5 record, but went on to win Super Bowl XL in Detroit. The 12-7-1 Toronto Argonauts knocking off the 14-5 B.C. Lions in the 2004 Grey Cup also is a good example, as is 4-4 Western's run to the Yates Cup last year. There's a good reason why they made Any Given Sunday a football movie.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Was there a man dismayed? There certainly didn't seem to be on the Queen's side. In my pregame interviews for the aforementioned preview piece, there was a huge atmosphere of confidence. No Giffin, no problem; Queen's hung a 38-16 pasting on Ottawa in Week Six with Giffin in a limited role, and that win was convincing enough for me to write a regrettable lede.
"Saturday’s football game was a tale of two programs. The 6-0 Gaels were off to their best start in ages and ranked second in the country, while the 3-3 Ottawa Gee-Gees were a former powerhouse in sharp decline. Queen’s helped Ottawa continue their slide from pre-season favourites to a team struggling to make the playoffs, beating the Gee-Gees 38-16."
That was probably justified at the time: Ottawa struggled for most of the season, and they never found consistency until this week. Still, I didn't think this one was going to be anywhere near as easy, especially given Ottawa's returnees from injury and Giffin's possible to probable absence. Even after the Waterloo game, all the talk was that he wasn't that badly hurt and would be back; glad I stayed skeptical there.
In any case, the Gaels weren't dismayed even without their star running back. Marty Gordon and Jimmy Therrien had proven to be capable backups before, even if they didn't pose the same kind of power running threat and force the defence to concentrate on the ground game. They were still an 8-0 team that had been lights-out dominant against most of the OUA (the Western game was a notable exception, but they still took that one by a large margin in the end). There was also every chance that the bad, inconsistent Ottawa would show up, and even a flawless Gee-Gees team would have had trouble competing with a top-notch showing from the Gaels. Maybe it looked too easy; hindsight is always 20-20, and this columnist was surely taken in to a degree as well. I didn't go to the lengths of Jan Murphy from the Whig, but I thought Queen's could win by seven even without Giffin. My confidence, and that of the team, proved sorely mistaken in the end. Like the Light Brigade, the Gaels rode into the valley of death with high hopes that didn't survive the clash of battle.
Someone had blundered. Now, we come to the nub of the problem: assigning responsibility. This is one area where my twin interests of history and sportswriting overlap: both professions are always looking for scapegoats. You can make a case for a variety of causes in this one, though. Neate theorized that a big part of it is the playoff structure and the uneven competition during the season*, but he also assigns some blame to the coaching staff and Queen's ineffectiveness on offence.
*I partly agree on this, but I don't take it to the same lengths. Yes, it's horrible having teams that are basically just a walkover on the schedule. Those games don't accomplish anything for either school, and if we can find a way to reduce them by either forcing every school that wants to play CIS football into a more substantial commitment or realigning/tiering the divisions, I'm all for it. That's going to be a tough sell at the CIS level, though, especially considering that the current model favours the participation of the many. I disagree that there's something inherently wrong with a league where a 4-4 team can win the Yates Cup, though, and I think the reason for that dissent is my sports background. As Neate wrote, his first love is baseball, which takes the sustained-excellence model further than pretty much any other sport these days due to the length of the regular season and the limited number of teams in the playoffs. I come from more of a soccer, hockey and football background, at least originally, and in all of those sports, it's more about getting hot at the right time. I live for the crazy upsets in the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League, the deep playoff runs of the likes of the 1982 and 1994 Vancouver Canucks and the Super Bowl trophy of the 2007-08 New York Giants. For me, it's the playoffs that matter, and I love to see the results no one predicted, which is why I'd probably be thrilled about Ottawa's win if I didn't go to Queen's.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Back to the scapegoats: I'm not so sure that we need to find too many in this case. Yes, there were plenty of bad plays, including a shocking number of drops by the receiving corps when they were open: if they're able to pull in a few of those, it might have been a different story. From my perspective, though, it just looked like the Gaels could never get everything to click at the same time. When Dan Brannagan was making lights-out throws, the receivers couldn't haul them in. Other times when they got open, Brannagan missed them with a pass. Yes, Dan Village missed two field goals, but he did a great job of punting all day for my money, and a more effective offence might have given him a shorter kick or scored touchdowns on its own. Yes, Giffin's absence hurt, but Gordon and Therrien filled in pretty well. They couldn't force Ottawa to play the run, and that hurt Queen's passing game, but they did their best and created a lot of yards on the ground. It's tough to do that when you haven't seen much of the ball for most of the season. Yes, losing middle linebacker Thaine Carter hurt the Gaels' defence, but as fellow linebacker T.J. Leeper pointed out afterwards, they seemed to rally around their fallen leader. The defence did an admirable job overall of containing an explosive group of Gee-Gees. At times, Queen's rode boldly and well; as the poem shows, though, no cavalry charge can succeed against massed artillery fire.
Probably eight times out of ten, the Gaels would have played well enough to win this one, but this was one of the outliers. Ottawa executed a perfect game, shutting down Queen's passing offence and pounding the ball with running back Dave Mason. Even after he went down, they stayed with the smash-mouth football and Kingston native Craig Bearss stuck it to his hometown. As mentioned above, Queen's defence did a decent job of containment that on most days would have been good enough, especially with their usual lights-out offence. This wasn't most days, though, and what should have been a glorious charge through the enemy lines turned into a nightmarish ride into the jaws of death.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
While all the world wondered. That summed up this one pretty well. All of a sudden, the mighty Golden machine ground to a halt against an underachieving bunch in garnet and grey. If you look at the previous history, though, it's easy to see the Gaels as the underdogs and Ottawa as the powerhouse army. Queen's hadn't beaten Ottawa in six years before this year's Thanksgiving game, and they'd lost to them in the semifinals two years ago. They'd also lost their first home playoff game in a long while last season against the Western Mustangs, another 4-4 team that underachieved during the regular season based on their talent but got rolling at the right time and went on to win the Yates Cup. Queen's was certainly still the favorite here, but perhaps shouldn't have been favoured by so much. Yet, they were, so all the world wondered when their season ended in tatters.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
Back from the mouth of hell. That could have described the understandably shell-shocked expressions on the players' faces after the game. They that had fought so well during the regular season had ran into far worse than they were expecting, and came up short in the end. Much like the British cavalry units involved in that disastrous charge, they found that past glories were worthless in the face of a new, more powerful foe.
All that was left of them: perhaps that's even more apt. Some will argue that it's just a game. Well, not at this level, and certainly not higher up. Anyone who's read or watched Friday Night Lights knows about the levels they go to in Texas over high school football. Here, the intensity isn't quite that bad, but there are still school reputations and potential CFL jobs on the line. Moreover, anyone who ever argues that university sports (or any reasonably high-level sport, for that matter) are just meaningless games obviously hasn't put in the time on the practice field. For months and years, these students devoted themselves to their university's football team, probably at the expense of grades and friendships, certainly at the expense of countless amounts of time. For some of the graduating ones, they'll never again don a helmet and pads. When you play any sport for a long period of time, your identity begins to get bound up in it: believe me, I know. When that all comes crashing down weeks before you thought it would, in the worst way possible, it's awfully tough for there to be much left. I've been through the soul-crushing defeats as an athlete, and it can just ruin your life for a while. The Queen's guys are all smart types, and I know there's more to their lives than football, but it's still certainly going to be an adjustment for them.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
When can their glory fade? The traditional view of sports would argue that it should have already dissipated. In the end, there can only be one, and nothing short of the ultimate prize is worth celebration. I take exception to that, though. Yes, this is not what they hoped for and not what they could have acheived, but this team should be honoured and celebrated on its own merits. This is surely one of the best squads ever to don Queen's uniforms, even if they didn't claim the Vanier Cup. They were the only Gaels team to ever go 8-0, and only the eighth team ever to go undefeated in the regular season. They set a school record for offence with 374 points, averaging over 47 points per game and only allowing over 16 points twice. Giffin led the OUA in rushing yards and might still pick up Ontario's Hec Creighton nomination, while Brannagan threw for the third-most yards in the country, Osie Ukwuoma led the CIS in sacks (with Dee Sterling tied for third) and Scott Valberg led the country in receiving yards. Valberg also put up the third-best season in Queen's history in terms of receiving yards (but perhaps the best ever, considering that he averaged more yards per catch than either Jock Climie or James Maclean, the two legends in front of him). This team put on a show all year, and those of us who saw them play can proudly attest to that. They also revitalized the interest in university football in Kingston, among both students and local residents.
Let's not blot out the good with the bad; these Gaels should be feted for what they did accomplish, not raked over the coals for what they didn't. As my hero Grantland Rice once penned in Alumnus Football,
"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks-not that you won or lost-
But how you played the game."
The Light Brigade didn't accomplish their goal, and their charge turned into a horrible defeat. Yet, you can make a strong case that it's not the defeat that was noteworthy: after all, those have happened since time began. What's always stood out to me about the poem is the triumph even in defeat.
"Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd."
That's a picture of a doomed but heroic force, and I think it's applicable to this year's Gaels football team. Yes, they lost in the end, but boldly they rode and well, back from the mouth of hell, and as Queen's students, fans and chroniclers, we still should honour them; they're our noble six hundred.
[The full text of The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Lord Tennyson, can be found here...]
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Much like the famed Light Brigade, the Gaels perhaps came into this game without an idea of what they were truly up against. Yes, the coaches and players said all the right things beforehand ["Have the tables turned?", myself, Queen's Journal: the question mark I added into that title seems like a bloody good idea in retrospect, as today's game showed that the tables haven't changed too much since the 2006 loss]. Even in their guarded comments, though, the confidence came through, and they were right to be confident: they were an 8-0 team playing at home against a 4-4 team that barely stumbled into the playoffs. As I mentioned in my live blog of the game, though, "There are two kinds of 4-4 teams: the mediocre ones who gut out a few wins, and the brilliantly talented but inconsistent ones. Ottawa was always the latter."
That latter group of teams is scary, and it exists across all sports, but especially in football: the small sample size of the regular season and how each game can often turn on a play or two makes it so there isn't often that much difference between a perfect or near-perfect team and a team that just snuck into the playoffs. The ultimate case in point is last year's Super Bowl, where the 14-6 New York Giants knocked off the 18-0 New England Patriots, but there have been plenty of other examples. The 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers are another great case in point; they earned the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs with a 11-5 record, but went on to win Super Bowl XL in Detroit. The 12-7-1 Toronto Argonauts knocking off the 14-5 B.C. Lions in the 2004 Grey Cup also is a good example, as is 4-4 Western's run to the Yates Cup last year. There's a good reason why they made Any Given Sunday a football movie.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Was there a man dismayed? There certainly didn't seem to be on the Queen's side. In my pregame interviews for the aforementioned preview piece, there was a huge atmosphere of confidence. No Giffin, no problem; Queen's hung a 38-16 pasting on Ottawa in Week Six with Giffin in a limited role, and that win was convincing enough for me to write a regrettable lede.
"Saturday’s football game was a tale of two programs. The 6-0 Gaels were off to their best start in ages and ranked second in the country, while the 3-3 Ottawa Gee-Gees were a former powerhouse in sharp decline. Queen’s helped Ottawa continue their slide from pre-season favourites to a team struggling to make the playoffs, beating the Gee-Gees 38-16."
That was probably justified at the time: Ottawa struggled for most of the season, and they never found consistency until this week. Still, I didn't think this one was going to be anywhere near as easy, especially given Ottawa's returnees from injury and Giffin's possible to probable absence. Even after the Waterloo game, all the talk was that he wasn't that badly hurt and would be back; glad I stayed skeptical there.
In any case, the Gaels weren't dismayed even without their star running back. Marty Gordon and Jimmy Therrien had proven to be capable backups before, even if they didn't pose the same kind of power running threat and force the defence to concentrate on the ground game. They were still an 8-0 team that had been lights-out dominant against most of the OUA (the Western game was a notable exception, but they still took that one by a large margin in the end). There was also every chance that the bad, inconsistent Ottawa would show up, and even a flawless Gee-Gees team would have had trouble competing with a top-notch showing from the Gaels. Maybe it looked too easy; hindsight is always 20-20, and this columnist was surely taken in to a degree as well. I didn't go to the lengths of Jan Murphy from the Whig, but I thought Queen's could win by seven even without Giffin. My confidence, and that of the team, proved sorely mistaken in the end. Like the Light Brigade, the Gaels rode into the valley of death with high hopes that didn't survive the clash of battle.
Someone had blundered. Now, we come to the nub of the problem: assigning responsibility. This is one area where my twin interests of history and sportswriting overlap: both professions are always looking for scapegoats. You can make a case for a variety of causes in this one, though. Neate theorized that a big part of it is the playoff structure and the uneven competition during the season*, but he also assigns some blame to the coaching staff and Queen's ineffectiveness on offence.
*I partly agree on this, but I don't take it to the same lengths. Yes, it's horrible having teams that are basically just a walkover on the schedule. Those games don't accomplish anything for either school, and if we can find a way to reduce them by either forcing every school that wants to play CIS football into a more substantial commitment or realigning/tiering the divisions, I'm all for it. That's going to be a tough sell at the CIS level, though, especially considering that the current model favours the participation of the many. I disagree that there's something inherently wrong with a league where a 4-4 team can win the Yates Cup, though, and I think the reason for that dissent is my sports background. As Neate wrote, his first love is baseball, which takes the sustained-excellence model further than pretty much any other sport these days due to the length of the regular season and the limited number of teams in the playoffs. I come from more of a soccer, hockey and football background, at least originally, and in all of those sports, it's more about getting hot at the right time. I live for the crazy upsets in the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League, the deep playoff runs of the likes of the 1982 and 1994 Vancouver Canucks and the Super Bowl trophy of the 2007-08 New York Giants. For me, it's the playoffs that matter, and I love to see the results no one predicted, which is why I'd probably be thrilled about Ottawa's win if I didn't go to Queen's.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Back to the scapegoats: I'm not so sure that we need to find too many in this case. Yes, there were plenty of bad plays, including a shocking number of drops by the receiving corps when they were open: if they're able to pull in a few of those, it might have been a different story. From my perspective, though, it just looked like the Gaels could never get everything to click at the same time. When Dan Brannagan was making lights-out throws, the receivers couldn't haul them in. Other times when they got open, Brannagan missed them with a pass. Yes, Dan Village missed two field goals, but he did a great job of punting all day for my money, and a more effective offence might have given him a shorter kick or scored touchdowns on its own. Yes, Giffin's absence hurt, but Gordon and Therrien filled in pretty well. They couldn't force Ottawa to play the run, and that hurt Queen's passing game, but they did their best and created a lot of yards on the ground. It's tough to do that when you haven't seen much of the ball for most of the season. Yes, losing middle linebacker Thaine Carter hurt the Gaels' defence, but as fellow linebacker T.J. Leeper pointed out afterwards, they seemed to rally around their fallen leader. The defence did an admirable job overall of containing an explosive group of Gee-Gees. At times, Queen's rode boldly and well; as the poem shows, though, no cavalry charge can succeed against massed artillery fire.
Probably eight times out of ten, the Gaels would have played well enough to win this one, but this was one of the outliers. Ottawa executed a perfect game, shutting down Queen's passing offence and pounding the ball with running back Dave Mason. Even after he went down, they stayed with the smash-mouth football and Kingston native Craig Bearss stuck it to his hometown. As mentioned above, Queen's defence did a decent job of containment that on most days would have been good enough, especially with their usual lights-out offence. This wasn't most days, though, and what should have been a glorious charge through the enemy lines turned into a nightmarish ride into the jaws of death.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
While all the world wondered. That summed up this one pretty well. All of a sudden, the mighty Golden machine ground to a halt against an underachieving bunch in garnet and grey. If you look at the previous history, though, it's easy to see the Gaels as the underdogs and Ottawa as the powerhouse army. Queen's hadn't beaten Ottawa in six years before this year's Thanksgiving game, and they'd lost to them in the semifinals two years ago. They'd also lost their first home playoff game in a long while last season against the Western Mustangs, another 4-4 team that underachieved during the regular season based on their talent but got rolling at the right time and went on to win the Yates Cup. Queen's was certainly still the favorite here, but perhaps shouldn't have been favoured by so much. Yet, they were, so all the world wondered when their season ended in tatters.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
Back from the mouth of hell. That could have described the understandably shell-shocked expressions on the players' faces after the game. They that had fought so well during the regular season had ran into far worse than they were expecting, and came up short in the end. Much like the British cavalry units involved in that disastrous charge, they found that past glories were worthless in the face of a new, more powerful foe.
All that was left of them: perhaps that's even more apt. Some will argue that it's just a game. Well, not at this level, and certainly not higher up. Anyone who's read or watched Friday Night Lights knows about the levels they go to in Texas over high school football. Here, the intensity isn't quite that bad, but there are still school reputations and potential CFL jobs on the line. Moreover, anyone who ever argues that university sports (or any reasonably high-level sport, for that matter) are just meaningless games obviously hasn't put in the time on the practice field. For months and years, these students devoted themselves to their university's football team, probably at the expense of grades and friendships, certainly at the expense of countless amounts of time. For some of the graduating ones, they'll never again don a helmet and pads. When you play any sport for a long period of time, your identity begins to get bound up in it: believe me, I know. When that all comes crashing down weeks before you thought it would, in the worst way possible, it's awfully tough for there to be much left. I've been through the soul-crushing defeats as an athlete, and it can just ruin your life for a while. The Queen's guys are all smart types, and I know there's more to their lives than football, but it's still certainly going to be an adjustment for them.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
When can their glory fade? The traditional view of sports would argue that it should have already dissipated. In the end, there can only be one, and nothing short of the ultimate prize is worth celebration. I take exception to that, though. Yes, this is not what they hoped for and not what they could have acheived, but this team should be honoured and celebrated on its own merits. This is surely one of the best squads ever to don Queen's uniforms, even if they didn't claim the Vanier Cup. They were the only Gaels team to ever go 8-0, and only the eighth team ever to go undefeated in the regular season. They set a school record for offence with 374 points, averaging over 47 points per game and only allowing over 16 points twice. Giffin led the OUA in rushing yards and might still pick up Ontario's Hec Creighton nomination, while Brannagan threw for the third-most yards in the country, Osie Ukwuoma led the CIS in sacks (with Dee Sterling tied for third) and Scott Valberg led the country in receiving yards. Valberg also put up the third-best season in Queen's history in terms of receiving yards (but perhaps the best ever, considering that he averaged more yards per catch than either Jock Climie or James Maclean, the two legends in front of him). This team put on a show all year, and those of us who saw them play can proudly attest to that. They also revitalized the interest in university football in Kingston, among both students and local residents.
Let's not blot out the good with the bad; these Gaels should be feted for what they did accomplish, not raked over the coals for what they didn't. As my hero Grantland Rice once penned in Alumnus Football,
"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks-not that you won or lost-
But how you played the game."
The Light Brigade didn't accomplish their goal, and their charge turned into a horrible defeat. Yet, you can make a strong case that it's not the defeat that was noteworthy: after all, those have happened since time began. What's always stood out to me about the poem is the triumph even in defeat.
"Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd."
That's a picture of a doomed but heroic force, and I think it's applicable to this year's Gaels football team. Yes, they lost in the end, but boldly they rode and well, back from the mouth of hell, and as Queen's students, fans and chroniclers, we still should honour them; they're our noble six hundred.
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