Yes, it is true that the format applies equally to all the players and they all know what they are signing up for. I’m not saying it is unfair, only that it isn’t as statistically valid a way of determining “best” as other formats, that’s all. And that fans ought to “comment” with this understanding in mind as they lash out at each other over who is “actually” the best.
In the World Series, the better team has seven chances to prove it by winning a simple majority of those games. The fact that two teams went to seven games and then it came down to a final at-bat tells you very clearly how evenly matched the two teams were, and that one is only barely more “the best” than the other. The same can’t be said of, say, a Superbowl title that is won by a single point, or a NASCAR championship that is lost because the dominant car blows a tire running over debris on the last lap at Homestead.
In the context of this year’s Worlds, we have the two top players only separated by 0.3 points, and one could argue that this tiny separation demonstrates how evenly matched the were, if it weren’t for the fact that a single contest does not provide enough samples to arrive at that conclusion (statistically speaking).
Absolutely. There are people in every individual sport that have missed championships over something small. Golfers lose 72 hole majors over a short putt and Olympic swimmers have missed gold by a hundredth of a second. It’s about who shows up on game day.
That’s the reality, yes. But my point is that these contests are not statistically valid means of determining who is “best”. A determination that is very much on the minds and in the hearts of fans, as evidenced by how much they argue over who is best. I just think fans would do well to understand how statistically invalid most contest formats are and not lean on them to prove, one way or the other, who is best at their given sport.
They’re a combination of who is the best and who puts in the most time and effort to make their routine flawless. The more practiced a trick is the less likely you are to miss it.
I think competitions judge completely fine. I would replace the showmanship eval with a rarity one but that’s the only change I would make
Perfectly said. One missed catch, free throw or a two man advantage (hockey) without scoring has cost championships. It’s the nature of competition. The best team all year often isn’t the team that wins the championship. Like they say, it’s why they play the game.
I’m just saying that you can’t say Evan only lost because he missed his two lacerations. He lost because he built those into his routine in the first place and didn’t end up hitting them. Every person that freestyles has to balance difficulty with consistency.
I also disagree that they are boring without risk. All of the routines have risky tricks in them, some are just more risky than others. And the elements that are easier are only easier because these guys have practiced and perfected their tricks so much that it’s not difficult for them hit consistently.
Regardless it’s still very high level yoyoing and I don’t see how it can be boring as long as the viewer appreciates how skilled the yoyoing is.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it probably shouldn’t be, at least not in any of our major sports.
The lesser team/player only wins a championship when the underlying structure of the contest methodology is compromised, at least in terms of the presumed goal of determining the “best” team/player for the season (and it isn’t a “championship” if the season consists of only one or two events).
The reason modern sports have become (mostly) invalid determiners of team/player superiority is that the needs of television ratings have taken priority over all other competitive concerns. As mentioned, Major League Baseball used to have a much more valid method of crowning a champion, back when the “pennant race” had statistical validity. In those days, the best team almost invariably won the pennant, and when it was a close race, it was usually close for the right reasons. The same was true of NASCAR before 2014 when an elimination-style playoff system was introduced into the Chase (you want to talk about statistical validity–name any other sport in which every team competes against every other team 36 times over the course of a season).
Unfortunately for yoyoing, it simply isn’t practical to adopt a statistically valid contest methodology, which means we just have to accept that any method we do use will be seriously flawed, and just enjoy the proceedings for what they are: an entertaining show (and occasionally, if we’re lucky, a glimpse into the future of the game, as it appears to have happened in 4a this year).
That’s why we can’t really apply the standards and expectations of major sports competitions to yoyoing. The only thing they have in common is that neither can afford to do what’s necessary to establish (or restore) statistical legitimacy.
I think yoyoing is better in this regard than most sports. Consistency of tricks is mostly based on practice, so whoever practices their tricks and finds the balance between consistency and difficulty is most likely to win.
It’s a contest, and it’s a performance. We can say we wish misses weren’t judged so harshly, so that players would go bigger, but watching someone go up on stage and miss half their tricks might not turn out to be so enjoyable.
You can say that harder tricks should be counted more. Maybe there is some merit to this, but I think this is build in. I’m not an expert on judging, but it does seem like players take the risk reward into account. Gentry gauged what kind of routine would give him the best chance, and performed it amazingly! Evan went with more risk, and also did an amazing job! In this particular instance, the higher risk didn’t pay off, but it was taken.
Hopefully judging is evolving along with the sport.
Contests are contests, and represent one aspect of yoing. There is more than enough content to watch people hit unbelievable tricks, and share cutting edge creative stuff. I think it’s fine to have them be two different aspects of our hobby.
I don’t know, even within major sports there’s so much random variance that you would have to compile results from at least a 5 season period to determine who the best team is. I think given that it’s fine to say the team who ended up seeded in the playoffs and then won the playoffs was the best team that season. Because even if they statistically didn’t perform the best that season they won when it mattered.
In the NHL you could have 9 players on your team have career high shooting percentages that are much better than their average and your starting goalie could have a career high save percentage that is much higher than his average. This random variance/luck could carry you to a Stanley Cup over a team that has had consistent, repeated high averages for multiple players on the team for years. So that team was better and didn’t need random variance to do well, but they still lost when it mattered even if it was because the other team is lucky.
When you’re at that high of a level of play for a salary cap sport where there are multiple team members impacting the game whose performance can vary from season to season, luck is going to be a deciding factor a lot of the time. As opposed to something like tennis where it’s 1 v 1 and only two people have an impact on the outcome and there are multiple big tournaments each year.
I think this a great discussion to have though. I’d say yoyoing leans more toward tennis than team sports, but again like you said there’s not a huge sample size within a given year. And there’s also the fact that even with a standard of evaluation judging is at least a little bit subjective.
