You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will

by Cowherd, Colin

  How can that be? Boston is baseball, right?

  Nope. It just loves its own kids.

  Judging sports towns can be tricky. Los Angeles has a terrible reputation. It’s the place where fans arrive late and leave early. It’s apathetic. It’s dependent on trends and glamour and who’s hot now. But going through the last five years of attendance figures, the Dodgers and Angels outdrew the Yankees and Mets in four of them, with the fifth being a draw. Those numbers have to include a significant notation: during that time the Dodgers were owned by the slippery Frank McCourt, who was so despised that many Dodger fans protested his ownership in the final year by refusing to attend games.

  For the most part, we have a grasp on the cities that occupy the pantheon of sports fandom. The exception is Boston, which gets high marks despite not seeming to care about anything outside its immediate vicinity.

  I’m trying to figure this out. These kinds of sociological oddities fascinate me, and I’ve come up with two possible roadblocks Boston faces when it comes to caring about anything past its nose.

  1. Boston is too smart: an article titled “Us vs. America,” which used polling information from Northeastern University, made the case that Boston is simply different than most major cities. It’s more liberal, for one, which makes it more tolerant than the national average on issues such as gay marriage, abortion rights, and interracial sex. It has less gun ownership and less violence. Its population is younger, smokes less, and works out more. It’s home to more than seventy universities and colleges, eight of them major research universities. Those are staggering numbers.

  In addition, Boston is a financial, health care, and banking hub. The city and its surrounding areas are full of educated and busy people who have many interests and the disposable income to pursue those interests.

  Under that scenario, watching your team doesn’t make the cut.

  2. History—and not just sports history: forget for a moment the Celtics’ seventeen NBA titles, the Bruins’ six Stanley Cups, the coolest ballpark ever built, and Tom Brady. Let’s talk real history.

  Boston loves itself just a little more than any other city. If you were born and educated there, maybe you would, too.

  Sports allegiances tend to emerge at around nine or ten years old, when kids are aware enough to understand the rules of the games and old enough to replicate those games in the backyard.

  It also coincides with the time kids begin learning about American history in school. This is yet another way Boston is different. The American Revolution, which created many of our political and social beliefs, took place almost exclusively in and around Boston. The Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the midnight ride of Paul Revere—I learned about all of these events at an early age, but they took place somewhere else.

  Not if you’re a Boston kid, though. If you’re a Boston kid, all of those events were home games.

  If the seminal events in your nation’s history took place in your backyard, you’d probably get the sense that your city is special. Seriously, the birthplace of the country was right down the block—how cool is that? Field trips are a who’s who of founding fathers and profoundly important historical sites.

  So many of the names that are synonymous with America hail from the city. Ben Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and Edgar Allan Poe provide the foundation, and by seventh grade you’re listening to Mrs. Hathaway discuss the Kennedys. All Boston-bred. Hometown heroes. If you spent your entire childhood being told—directly or indirectly—that you’re special and different and just a little bit better than everybody else, wouldn’t you start to believe it?

  Seriously, even when Bostonians vacation they do it in their backyard. From Cape Cod to Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts is home to some of the country’s most sought-after summer refuges.

  Maybe some of this will help explain why most surveys of least-friendly cities find Boston near the top. The word smug tends to come up. If you live in New England, the term Mass-holes is a familiar, if ugly, one. The city sees itself as more important, more informed, and more historically relevant. The people who live there consider themselves descendants of American royalty. And in some ways, they’re right.

  Boston is America’s five-year-old, primed to be president.

  It views itself as different, special—perhaps even better than you.

  And it sees your teams as monumentally unimportant.

  The Gracious Host

  One of the by-products of our celebrity-soaked culture is a tendency to rely on the grandiose, mythical tale. The idea of one all-knowing messiah leading the uninitiated to safety through the churning waters of doubt is a staple of our time. Steve Jobs—and Steve Jobs alone—led Apple’s renaissance. The power of Ronald Reagan’s personality was the sole factor in reenergizing a sagging economy. Billy Beane’s ability to see beyond standard baseball statistics single-handedly turned the small-market Oakland Athletics into a contender.

  These stories make best sellers and cinematic fortunes, but their appeal has simple roots: they’re easier to tell than the layered truth. Rarely does one person or one idea or one factor turn around a country or a business or a team. The truth is found in the convergence of many factors.

  Similarly, the NFL’s current momentum and popularity is based on more than Roger Goodell’s leadership. It is a factor, sure, but there are almost too many others to count: a healthy connection to gambling in an increasingly gambling-centric nation; a level of controlled violence; a tech-friendly mentality; a pace and composition that’s made for television; and admirable parity.

  That last one might be oversold by the media, but it’s true nonetheless. Set against baseball’s deep-pocketed aristocracy and the NBA’s invitation-only glamour society, there is a sense that an NFL team can succeed wildly with the right coach and the right quarterback.

  From Rust Belt to Sun Belt, from Left Coast to Right Coast, you can win anywhere served by Google Maps. The NFL just feels a little more fair, even for the smallest of franchises. Green Bay has no owner and one hotel of significance within its city limits, and yet the Packers have thirteen league championships and four Super Bowl titles.

  Parity. Balance. Even. Equal. Fair. The NFL does a better job of either creating that reality or making us feel like it’s pretty close to the truth.

  So with that said, why wouldn’t the NFL consider a daring but reasonable way to alter the way some games are decided?

  Hear ye, hear ye—the esteemed court of Cowherd does declare that initial overtime possessions, from this point forward, will all go to the visitors. Out with the coin! Off with its freshly minted head!

  In 2012, the NFL changed its overtime policy. It used to be sudden death—first score wins. Now it’s sudden death with a disclaimer: first score wins, providing it’s a touchdown. If it’s just a field goal, the other fellas get a shot, too.

  This change wasn’t made to protect players—there was no safety issue.

  This change wasn’t made to protect the league’s assets—there was no financial gain involved.

  The NFL did it because ninety-one years after the first professional football game, even the smartest people in the sport struggle with how to make the overtime period truly fair.

  Just take a look at overtime periods across all levels of football. College and high school football use something called a Kansas Playoff, which seems cool on the surface but has the potential to become a time-consuming mess. Each team gets at least one possession from a predetermined spot on the field, and the possession ends when a team scores, misses a field goal, or turns the ball over. If the score remains tied after each team gets a possession, they do it again. If the score is tied after the second round of possessions, they do it again. If the score is tied after the third … basically, the Kansas Playoff can go on all night, with the brevity of a Senate hearing. Arkansas and Mississippi played seven overtimes a decade ago. Call it Mississippi Burn-out and be happy they’re not charging by the hour for pa
rking.

  But is that truly a fair way to determine a winner? A series of possessions in the cluttered red zone? Doesn’t the team with the better quarterback have a significant edge over a running team? Doesn’t the home team have a decided edge since the end zones are generally the loudest places for opposing offenses to operate?

  The NFL used sudden death for decades, starting in the mid-’70s. And then it decided a fairer way of determining a winner after four quarters was to kinda-sorta give each team a possession.

  But if the NFL is concerned with parity—and it seems to believe parity is good for business—then why not always give the road team possession and call the first team that scores the winner?

  From 1974 until the 2012 rule change, the first team with the ball won roughly 60 percent of the time. It’s an edge, but not an overwhelming edge. It’s perfectly understandable considering both defenses are bound to be worn down after sixty minutes of football. But that 60 percent figure is not extreme enough to indicate that a team with inferior talent would regularly win just on the basis of a favorable coin toss. A more truthful assessment is this: if you are reasonably efficient with the ball, you’re better off getting the ball first.

  And that’s precisely the kind of slight variable that adds fairness for a road team facing the challenges of coming into a hostile venue.

  Listen, football is the only sport where the crowd can hinder the opposing team’s offense. When you see the home quarterback near the goal line using both arms to quiet the home crowd, that’s actually sign language for, “It’s a lot easier to run an efficient offense in this league when all of you 67,800 people don’t make it sound like I’m standing inside a jet engine.”

  Every opposing team has to deal with that for every single one of their twelve to thirteen possessions. It’s a true disadvantage that you don’t find in any other sport. Opposing batters or pitchers aren’t influenced negatively by noise. Field-goal percentages in the NBA aren’t noticeably higher for the home team. But in the NFL, a sport increasingly built around the performance of the quarterback, there is real crowd adversity for the visiting team on each possession.

  How do you quantify this? By looking at the home-road records of some of the all-time great quarterbacks. Terry Bradshaw was an astounding 70-15 at home and 41-42 on the road. Dan Marino was a stallion in South Beach, winning 83 of 121. On the road? More like a pony—65-57. Joe Namath had a losing road record while Matt Ryan is nearly unbeatable (33-5) in the Georgia Dome.

  Clearly, the location of the game matters for quarterbacks. Why not even things out a little?

  Why not give the road quarterback the ball first and return to the sudden-death format? It provides just a slight statistical edge in a league determined to make things more fair.

  Let’s put this in context. Every single thing in football is geared to favor the home team. The home team gets more practice time because it doesn’t have to travel, a factor that grows with the greater distance the road team must travel. West Coast teams traveling east for early games (1 p.m. Eastern) are actually playing at 10 a.m. according to their body clocks. Home teams get more film time in a sport that values film more than Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola combined. We can even forget the benefits of sleeping and eating at home—those are obvious and part of every sport—but football is a film and preparation industry. There’s one game a week, which makes preparation and superior coaching paramount.

  Football is different that way. Basketball games are determined by the performance of star players. Baseball is about pitching. But football has evolved into a sport of coaching, and the salaries reflect as much. A college football coach, often working in a rural town and coaching just twelve games, earns an average of more than $1.6 million annually, according to USA Today. But a big-league manager working in a major metropolitan area managing 162 games averages less. In fact, sixteen big-league managers earn less than a million dollars a year. Why? Because coaching matters more in football, so it stands to reason that giving a coach more time to coach over the course of a week can be critical. That’s one reason why top coaches with top quarterbacks are tough to beat at home.

  So, long story short: playing at home is a considerable advantage for an NFL team.

  The NFL’s drafting, scheduling, and free-agency guidelines suggest a league that is consumed with fairness. The worst teams get the best draft picks and all that, so why not employ this one small change to acknowledge the inherent unfairness that comes with being an NFL team playing away from home? Why not at least give a small, subtle tip of the cap to the road team?

  Just be a gracious host. Is that too much to ask?

  The Sport That Shouldn’t Be

  Take a look at a Q-tips box. Nowhere does the text tell you to jam those things in your ears, even though everybody—especially the people who make and market Q-tips—knows we all jam them in our ears. But on the box it tells you to use them to remove makeup, lipstick, nail polish. It doesn’t say a word about your ear, except to tell you not to jam a Q-tip in your ear. This is basic legal protection.

  The sports connection? Believe it or not, Q-tips and the X Games have something in common. For protection—legal and otherwise—the X Games should never, ever label itself a sport. In fact, the X Games should go out of its way to distance itself from mainstream sports, and it should start by getting all the X Games events out of the Olympics.

  Here’s why:

  X Games events are adventure and should be marketed that way. At its heart, the X Games is a series of stunts—not a sport. There’s no league, no commissioner, no officials. There are very few guidelines.

  It’s bullfighting, skydiving, cliff diving—one of many competitions built on risk and risk alone.

  In real sports, risk is bad. A quarterback who puts himself at risk by going headfirst instead of sliding? Bad move. In the NHL, penalties are a risk that hurts a team. Baseball is a sport of percentages, where you play by the book 90 percent of the time. Risk in baseball often means losing.

  The essence of the X Games boils down to this: I can be a bigger badass than you.

  Risk is stardom. To be the next star, you have to do something more outrageous than the guy who came before you. You have to eclipse his risk. That’s the key to the whole thing. It’s the engine that keeps the machine running.

  The object is to maintain the highest risk with artistic merit.

  Entertainment.

  Not sport.

  Mike Trout doesn’t have to eclipse anybody’s risk. Neither does Aaron Rodgers or Kyrie Irving or the next great hockey star.

  These kids in the X Games aren’t Mike Trout or Aaron Rodgers or Kyrie Irving—they’re the modern-day equivalent of Evel Knievel. Without the inevitable escalation of risk, there’s no X Games.

  The downside to this is obvious. Stunts go wrong, and when they do … damn, you’re going to have major injuries. You’re going to have deaths. These are realities that can’t be avoided. They’re built into the definition of what these events are. When snow-mobiler Caleb Moore died after he crashed from what looked like about 200 feet in the air—on a snowmobile!—it was two things:

  A tragic event.

  And a by-product of the X Games culture.

  But look what happened: the mainstream sports media took to the airwaves and the keyboards to decry Moore’s death. It was reported in much the same way it might be reported if a soccer player or a speed skater had died. One problem: it wasn’t a death in a sporting event.

  Doesn’t make it any less tragic. It just makes it more understandable.

  It’s a problem of classification.

  Back to the Q-tips box: calling the X Games sport is equivalent to the folks at Q-tips putting Stick this in your ear right on the box. You don’t want to make yourself susceptible to mainstream columnists and mainstream media. Nobody on the sports page talks about bullfighters dying, or WWE guys dying. There’s a simple reason why: they’re not branded as sports. They’re either brand
ed as entertainment or daredevils.

  Traditional media members are typically men in their forties and fifties. They see sports as spectators. Most 17- to 21-year-olds see sports as participatory. This goes double or triple for the X Games—most traditional media people don’t get it, and they aren’t interested unless something horrible happens.

  Get into the psyche of a 20-year-old kid. Society is far more corrosive than it was thirty years ago. I’ll watch YouTube videos of a skateboard crash and wince. My 16-year-old stepson will watch them and laugh. There are entire television shows devoted to people having horrific crashes on skateboards. The 17- to 27-year-olds who are growing up in a more corrosive society with harsher images have a different stomach for the risks of X Games, and the injuries of X Games.

  They’re not offended by it. I am, but I’m old-school media. I shouldn’t matter.

  The mainstream media? Out of touch generationally on the X Games. But if you eliminate the branding, you solve the problem. They’ll simply ignore it. Problem solved.

  If I ran ESPN and the X Games, I would say never label it as sports in any promo again. And take every one of my events out of the Olympics.

  Wrestling got kicked out of the Olympics at the beginning of 2013 and everybody associated with the sport was crestfallen. The X Games should get the hell out of the Olympics—as fast as possible—and then throw a major X Game–style party to celebrate.

  I’m not suggesting they change the X Games. It’s a huge success. Instead, change how it’s categorized. It’s like tapas. Are they an appetizer or an entree? They’re both, they’re neither—who knows? They’re great, but the classification problem is why the local tapas restaurant will never be more popular than the Italian joint or the Mexican place.

  Evel Knievel wasn’t an athlete in the traditional sense. He was on Wide World of Sports when I was a kid but we never thought of him the way we thought of Walter Payton or Mike Schmidt or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. If he got seriously injured, the mainstream sports media didn’t jump up and down and call for a ban on motorcycle jumps or rocket rides across the Snake River Canyon. He was a guy performing a stunt.