Football season. I turned on the TV yesterday to see how the Vikings were doing and watched commercials for a few minutes. Here is a scenario that I bet 10 gazillion American men know about. You're watching the game. It's almost over, or maybe almost half time. Your wife wants you to do something. You say, "Yeah, ok, there's only three minutes left." Fifteen minutes later she hollers again, and you have to report that it's the two-minute warning. This tends to elicit, at our house, some sardonic commentary. The problem might be even more obvious when you're at the game. The interminable commercial interruptions must have the effect of boosting beer sales considerably--and the average blood-alcohol content to levels that pose a threat to social comity.
Anyway, the Vikings game yesterday had a rather stunning conclusion. I went downtown to the office to work for an hour or so, arriving at about the time the game should have been ending, and saw a lot of glum-looking fans in the street. My suspicion that the Vikings had lost was confirmed when I overheard the end of the conversation one had with a traffic cop, who shrugged and said, "Gonna be a long season."
But the fans I saw in the street, it now appears, left when Jacksonville scored a touchdown with twenty seconds left in the game to take, after a two-point conversion, a 23-20 lead. The ensuing commercials, then the kick-off, then more commercials, gave ticket-holders plenty of time to make their getaway. So they did not see the Vikings, starting at their own 30-yard-line, complete two passes for a total of 32 yards before kicking, on the last play of regulation, a game-tying 55-yard field goal. The poor fellows who had managed to put off their wives for a half hour or more now had an overtime to watch. The Vikings ended up winning, 26-23.
I'm not much of a professional football fan, but close readers of this blog--both of you!--will know that I do take an interest in strategy. For example, after a Viking loss last season, I wondered why teams don't sometimes, near the end of a game, allow their opponent to score a touchdown when it seems clear that it would increase their chances of winning the game. For example, score tied, a minute to go, other team is first-and-ten at your 12-yard-line. If they score a touchdown on the next play, you have a minute to answer; if however you allow them to run three safe plays before lining up for a field goal with 4 seconds left, your only hope is that they miss a chip shot. Permitting a touchdown seems the right move, but I have never seen it done--until last year, in the Super Bowl, when Bill Belichik's Patriots allowed a touchdown in order to get the ball back with some time on the clock. They lost anyway--it's admittedly a desperate strategy that nevertheless is the right one in some circumstances.
The end-game could become farcical, however, if the defense was trying to allow a touchdown and the offense just took a knee at the 1-yard-line. It couldn't be any worse than ten million basketball games where, near the end, the trailing team intentionally commits a series of "nonintentional" fouls in order to conserve time and get the ball back.
Punting is another area in which coaches seem behind the curve. You know how the home team crowd frequently jeers and boos when, on fourth down, their coach sends in the punter? Turns out that the drunken judgment of thousands is usually better than that of the meticulously prepared coach. According to what appears to be a pretty thoroughgoing analysis by David Romer, a professor of political economy at UC Berkeley, punting is almost always a bad idea when you are on the other team's side of the 50-yard-line. If you have less than four yards to go for a first down, it's usually a bad idea no matter where you are on the field. The supposed value of "field position" is slight compared to having the ball, being on offense. Nevertheless, coaches consistently choose to punt in situations where analysis indicates that the fans' intuition--that they should "go for it"--is the best strategy.
Speaking of punting: What about the Vikings' punter, Chris Kluwe? I'm not talking about his punting. I'm talking about his take-no-prisoners prose style and full-throated advocacy for same-sex marriage, as exhibited in a letter he wrote to a Maryland state legislator. Background: Brendan Ayanbadejo, a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, has gone public with his support for a Maryland ballot initiative that would legalize same-sex marriage. A state legislator who opposes the initiative then wrote a letter to the Ravens' owner in which he urged the owner to compel his employee to shut up--"inhibit such expressions of your employee" was the exact phrase. Kluwe then wrote the legislator a letter enlivened by more colorful phrases, such as: "They [married gay couples] won't turn you into a lustful cockmonster." His whole letter is here. It's an enjoyable read, though perhaps an imperfect vehicle for changing minds.
