Sports Discussions

In general, I dislike sports. (Yes, I am going somewhere with this.) Discussion of sports primarily deals with facts, and facts only. However, facts don't speak for themselves, and must be interpreted by someone. So, when my friends talk amongst themselves about the latest football or baseball game, comparing teams, or games, or players, I find myself asking (to myself, of course), so what? You say this Team A won this game. What does that mean? Anybody can know if that Team A lost that game or not, why is that win important? By itself, that win does not prove Team A is definitely better than the other team, merely that they won that particular time, Team A would need to consistently defeat the same team to demonstrate superiority.

Discussion about sports ends up falling into a few categories:

I) Argument over which player/team is best/better.

This is almost universally done by slinging fact after fact: this player has more goals scored, better accuracy, or what have you. Empirically, these facts are true; nobody can contest them. Yet, the underlying question can never be answered by those facts. Even if player A has more goals than player B does, what if player B is scored on less than A? Which is the better player then? If the game were 1v1, it would be easy to determine: pit A and B against each other until we have a statistically significant result about who wins more. Most games aren't 1v1, though. Untangling if player A is better than player B in a team scenario is incredibly hard—there are so many variables to account for. You might not be able to compare A and B, they might play in different positions, to which any comparison is the classic apple vs orange.

II) Expression of dis/approval of a player's or team's performance.

This is similar to the first category because it is essentially a comparison between the real team and the idealized team the person expressing his dis/approval has in his mind. Conversations in this category are simply people agreeing they all dis/approve of a team/player's performance. "Did you see how X fumbled on this play?" "Can you believe Team Y's defense last game?" "That was an amazing goal during the second half!" "I can't believe Team Z came back after being 10 points down!" Again, how do you know that performance wasn't due to some random chance, and that it actually means they are better?

III) Opinion of how a player or team could do better.

"Player X needs to pick up more rushing yards." "Team A needs to improve their offense." "Player Y should quit dropping the ball." On what basis are you making these suggestions? Are you an expert in the sport? I think we can both agree those players are experts in their respective sport—who are you to tell them where they need to improve? How do you know that their actions were the only thing influencing the outcome? If the player dropped the ball, how do you know the ball wasn't already slippery from rain or whatever? How do you know that whatever outcome did occur wasn't already the best outcome?

There might be more categories, but I think I covered the majority. My point is that discussions of sports in and of itself lead to inane conversation. Meta-sports conversation, on the other hand, does not. If we were to discuss how we could know which team is better, then once we find that criteria, we could apply it to any and all teams without any subjective opinions muddying the judgement. However, few wish to talk about what would make a hypothetical player better than another hypothetical player by examining the entirety of their stats and experiences.