Watching College football in India

Bluebulb1 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:00:46 -0000

Guys, I'm a Longhorn stuck in India (in Pune in particular) for an year. Any ideas on how I can watch UT games over here. And while you're at it, how about the NFL?

I managed the OU game by watching the gamecast but I'd obviously prefer to watch the actual game. The OU game was worth it even though I had to sit in my balcony all night to get good internet speed on my card. Any suggestions?

Clutch or Choker

Bluebulb1 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:19:08 -0000

How do you define one player as being either a clutch player or a choker? Particularly in something like Football which, more than any other sport, is a team sport. If you listen long enough to people, you might be let to believe that there are some players who are extremely "clutch" and some who just cannot "handle the pressure". I for one don't believe that one bit.

My favorite book (non-fiction) ever is Moneyball in which Michael Lewis talks about how you define "clutch" performance. The player need to elevate his performance in a measurable manner (and do that consistantly) - if you're a hitter, your batting average must be higher in the playoffs every year than it is in the regular season, if you're a basketball player then your field goal percentage goes up in the playoffs. When they tried to measure clutch performance in baseball thus, they couldn't identify such behaviour. Fact is, people like Derek Jeter (who I do like) have been labeled with this tag because people remember the times he did come through and forget the times that he failed.

Now if you couldn't measure clutch behavior in a relatively straightforward situation like hitting, how can you even measure clutch behavior (for a QB) in a sport like football where a 100 things could affect whether or not a ball is caught successfully? The left guard could have missed a blocking assignment, the WR could have run a route wrong (the other team could have videotaped your walkthrough!) there could have been a sudden gust of wind.

Here's a fun factoid - guess which QB has the most overtime victories in the NFL? Tom Brady. Impressive? Maybe. But answer me this - why did those games have to go to overtime in the first place? As Manning said, "You hear about how many fourth quarter comebacks that a guy has and I think it means a guy screwed up in the first three quarters." Manning doesn't have comeback and overtime victories because he wins games in the first three quarters.

This makes it the third consecutive entry into the playoffs that Tom Brady has failed to convert into a Super Bowl. Manning was called a choker for a similar performance earlier. Does that make Tom Brady a choker then? If Brady is truly the son of God as everyone claims (sorry couldn't resist that dig) and HE led the team to the victories, then isn't he also to blame for the losses?

Or maybe individual performance of a QB in Football should not be tied to wins and losses and instead, if at all he is to be judged, then he be judged purely on his stats alone. Even those can be flawed (like Eli Manning's INT in the SB, which was clearly not his fault) but it's better than the Win/Loss record which is much less in control of the QB.

Truth is, and you can disagree if you like, Brady has had the luxury of a terrific coach, a great defense and an outstanding O-line. I'm not saying he's mediocre but we saw what happened when you removed some of those away from him - he became "human".

BTW, I am not suggesting that "choking" doesn't exist. There are definitely some players for whom the big stage can cause problems. But I don't believe that there are players who necessarily (and consistently) elevate their play in key situations.

SB Nation User Blog: Bluebulb1

Watching College football in India

Clutch or Choker