Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Sports thoughts

I just watched a corny Rbk commercial trying to make hockey seem really deep and important where Crosby comes up at the end and says how he plays for the logo on the front and not the name on the back. And even though it was corny, in a lot of sense it it is true of a lot of hockey players and is a reminder of how hockey is very authentic and genuine. For instance, how players so rarely fake injury for purposes of getting penalty calls in their favour and how they will continue to play in the midst of immense pain and even how emotional it can be to play for team and fans and have to leave (although "have" can be debated in Smyth's case, he is my example of this, Gretzky same thing).

This provides a striking contrast to major European soccer players. I was reminded of this when David Bentley scored his winning goal in a recent game in the English PL. He, as many others do, used this opportunity to call attention to himself by using a double overhead thumbs up pointing to the name printed on his upper back. True, on occasion you see players grab the crest on their shirt and kiss it or direct attention to it, but this most often high profile/paid players or ones who are in bad standing with the fans and are attempting to win their support back.

In fact, since players can be simply bought off other teams during certain times of the year, there is frequent media attention on players who indicate their desires to play for the big clubs. Why would they do this? Because this would benefit them and their career the most. In this way, the smaller clubs are more of a temporary vessel for them to reach their true goals. This is why EPL games are so easy to predict, because there is always a steady stream of quality players from smaller teams to bigger ones, and the league table is often very similar from year to year; few teams fight for the top.

And of course you can go on to talk about the unwillingness to play through pain and the constant feigning of injury, and regardless of how much skill these players have, you can't respect them anywhere near as much hockey players.

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