The Difference between "The Champions" and "The Best""It is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the
game." This month's essay was inspired by the recent Winter Olympics, and to put my two cents in on debates that came out of those Olympics. This is the first of two essays dealing with math and sports. In this essay, I will demonstrate the the existence of chance in sports. Next month's will explore how some athletes learn to deal with chance. One of the big headlines out of the Winter Games was the controversy over the pairs figure skating competition. The Russian pair had the superior "artistic impression", but a noticeable flub on a landing went unnoticed by some of the judges, meanwhile the Canadian pair skated a technically flawless performance though not as "artistic" as the Russian pair. You probably already know the story about how one inconsistent judge's marks got thrown out leaving four first place votes for Russia and four for Canada, and an extremely rare two gold medals were awarded. What was interesting were discussions about how figure skating is too subjective to be a "real sport", and how sports scored on a judges whim are patently unfair. Yes, it is true that in figure skating and other judged sports, the "winners" are not always "the best". But in truth, all sports have a certain measure of chance and subjectivity in them that sometimes rewards lesser competitors over better ones. If this measure of chance did not exist, sports would be boring, and not worth watching. Figure skating is a sport because it is a competition of physical skill. Sports are basically "games" that favor physical skills over mental -- though every athlete understands that mental skills are just as important as physical skills. Figure skating is not the only sport decided on the whim of judges, the Winter Games also include Freestyle Skiing, Half Pipe Snowboarding and Ski Jumping which are all based on judges. Numerous other sports including Boxing is decided by judges as well. If we throw out one of these for being too subjective to be a sport, we pretty much have to throw out the rest. Even in sports where judges are not the final arbiter of the winner, there are "referees" which can at least affect the outcome. The two most popular sports in the world are soccer and basketball. While the winner of both of these sports seems to be fairly objective -- who ever scores the most points in the time allotted, wins -- I think practically every sports fan can remember a game where bad referee decisions caused the outcome of a game to change. Pick a number from one to ten There are sports that do not rely on judges or referees to determine a winner (or they have very little effect). Most of these involve racing against a clock. Yet, there is a certain amount of chance beyond the competitors control in these events as well. I could not help notice that many speed events, downhill skiing and sledding events in particular, are now measured in thousandths of a second. It makes me wonder if this is just to show off the vanity of the clock makers, because no human activity deserves to be measured in thousandths of a second. The human eye is incapable of seeing a hundredth of a second, let alone a thousandth of a second. Let me put it this way, track and weather conditions that vary minute to minute and the racers have no control over could add or subtract a few thousandths of a second to the racers time. Thus, the thousandths of a second clock is for all intents and purposes a random number generator. As far as I know, no competition this year needed that measure to determine a winner, but if the thousandths measure is needed, we may as well just declare it a tie. Chance in Team Sports In practically every professional sport, it is possible for even the worst team to beat the best team. Players are human, they have good days and bad. In professional sports, both teams are made up of competent players (otherwise they could not make a living in sports). So when the hapless team that is sick of losing puts all their effort into beating the leagues best, and the leagues best team considers the hapless team a day off, it should come as no surprise that occasionally a big upset occurs. Usually, the best team wins, but one never knows. Last year the best team in baseball (Seattle Mariners) lost twice to the worst team in baseball (Tampa Bay Devil Rays). No team in any professional sport has gone undefeated since 1972 (Miami Dolphins), almost as rare as teams that go through a season without a win. Theoretically, the best team should win every time and the worst should lose every time. Since practically no team in any professional league ever goes undefeated or winless, it proves that either the best team does not always win, or there really is not a best or worst team. The Tournament Sort The problem with using a tournament playoff in sports is that sometimes the "best" team does not always win every game. This March will be the annual NCAA college basketball championship. The sixty four best teams, determined by conference championships, play a single elimination tournament. Thirty two teams are eliminated in the first round, sixteen more in the second, etc. Which ever one of the 64 teams manages six wins in a row is crowned "champion". Every year there are upsets, teams that were supposed to get to the final four occasionally lose in the early rounds. If the goal of a tournament were to determine the "best" team, the chance factor gets in the way often. A better way to determine the "best" is to do what the NBA does and have teams play best three out of five, or four out of seven in each round. So good is this method that each year the NBA champion is almost always one of the top three teams during the regular season. It almost makes the first round of playoffs superfluous. This is not always the case, of course. Last year the Seattle Mariners tied the record for most wins in a season with 116, they were favored to win it all. Yet, they lost to the Yankees in the second round. That is another thing about season ending championships, sometimes teams that were really good, peak too early and do not perform as well come playoff time. Over the course of the season, the Mariners were the better team, but in mid-October, the Yankees proved better. "Champion" vs. "Best" The point of all of this is this idea: Champions are not always the best, but we can determine champions objectively. The "best" is highly subjective and difficult to determine because there are chance factors in every sport. But, is not that the fun of watching sports? While the NBA format does a better job at rewarding the better teams, most people enjoy the NCAA tournament more, simply because every game is a high stakes "do or die" game. Whether it be the last second buzzer beater or the ninth inning rally or the two minute drill, it is those subjective roll of the dice moments in sports we love the most. It seems to me that the most memorable games are those that involve upsets. The Diamondbacks' upset of the Yankees in last years World Series, or the Patriots upset of the Rams in this years Super Bowl will be remembered as high points or low points for fans of these franchises for years to come, while expected outcomes like the Lakers over the Pacers are quickly forgotten. Rooting for the underdog (when your favorite team is not involved) seems to be a universal human trait. Back to the Glossary
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