At the 2000 European Football Championship, Germany played Portugal in the final match of the group stages. Germany needed to win while Portugal had already secured the first place in that group.
Portugal sent a team of players who usually sat on the bench. These players were highly motivated and soundly the German side 3:0.
Of course there’s a difference.
The team not trying to win doesn’t care if they win. Winning or losing is not the big point to them. If they happen to win, nothing actually changes anything for them. An NFL team with a playoff berth secured running out second stringers at the end of a season has nothing to gain (or lose) by winning or losing.
The team trying to lose is trying to lose. If they happen to win, they’ve failed at their objective.
If you think the Colts were deliberately tanking, you’d be on even shakier ground. Several players, coaches, and front office personnel were replaced after the season. Many have not been picked up elsewhere. Others have taken demotions to get jobs. Their ineptitude was maybe good for the franchise (if Luck pans out, which is not 100% guaranteed) but bad personally. The coaches, especially, had absolutely no reason to stop trying to win. And their 2 wins came towards the end of the season, which came too close for comfort to spoiling their draft position. If they were deliberately not trying to win, they were doing it in an incredibly inept fashion.
Bwahahaha! I love this! Sure, the bad rep sucks, but I like watching badminton and this was so totally over the top that I was super excited to see it. It made me more interested in badminton than ever! After googling a lot to try to circumvent the IOC and NBC blocking everyone, I saw a short 2 min clip of it and I must say, that was soooooooo crazy! Open mocking by the audience, boos, anger, and the insanely abysmal level of play is unbelievable! You can bet I was squirming in my seat but riveted by the action! :D:D:D
Also the problem is in badminton, there is no way to prevent someone from actively trying to lose other than actively trying to lose yourself. And once two teams have committed to trying to lose, the game will never end. This isn’t like the soccer situation where there could actually be a competition for own goals.
The best solution would have been to get a confirmation from both teams that they would prefer the situation that they lose the match, and then have them play but reverse the result.
You’re not actually answering the points I’m making because frankly, you can’t. You aren’t addressing the problem that you think they should have played in a farcical and dishonest way, in order to preserve an illusion.
Taking steroids is a distinct, positive, physical action. Losing a match on purpose in a sneaky way is physically indistinguishable from losing a match because you can’t play any better.
A better analogy (farcical as it may be, but that’s not my problem) would be if it was discovered that thinking about using steroids gave players just as much of an advantage as actually using steriods, and it was consequently made illegal to either use or think about using steroids. It’s impossible to umpire this rule, and probably impossible for the players to avoid breaking it.
Maybe in the abstract case, but did you watch the video? The play WAS physically distinguishable from normal play. There was nothing sneaky about it.
I have answered your points, as I’ve repeatedly said the players should have just played the match in their usual competitive manner because:
a) the laws of the sport require them too (not to mention the whole sportsmanship thing); and
b) I don’t believe they got any real advantage from losing the match anyway and in fact by behaving as they did they’ve now lost all chance of success.
I have never said the players should have sneakily played to lose, and your just putting words in my mouth when you say that. What you call a ‘pragmatic reality’ is in my view a false dichotomy you’ve created for yourself.
As for your nonsense about what I would do, well that’s completely irrelevant as I’ll never be a top line sportsman anyway but yes I think I would “be capable of sufficient selflessness to motivate yourself to play quite as hard and well as you ordinarily would?” When I did play sport (high school and low level (okay social grade) rugby till 25) none of the games I played in had much real significance but I went out and played the best I could for my team and because I enjoyed it.
Quite frankly the attitude you espouse is the same ends justify the means mentality that leads to underarm bowling and the like. In fact I suspect you are Greg Chappell and I claim my 5 pounds.
Your statement about a team being far enough ahead that it’s impossible to catch up is not part of this. That team did play to win and is continuing to play that way. They would put starters back in if the outcome were ever in question. Teams will only put forth enough effort until adding more becomes a disadvantage. And that is the way it should be. If that leads to tactics that are not overall beneficial to the sport, change the rules so teams need to put in more effort.
In the case of a team not caring if they win or not, it is more beneficial to the team to lose and not injure starters than it is for them to win at the cost of an injured starter, so they don’t risk any of those injuries. The coaches are not putting forward “one’s best efforts to win a match”, as is the rule in badminton. Why is it okay to do that in football but not in badminton?
If you are going to allow teams/players/competitors an advantage by not putting every effort to win, it clearly will lead to situations where the efforts that are put forth are only to the point where it starts to become a disadvantage. In the case of football, there are advantages to playing second stringers, so that is what is done. Playing anything else would be more of a disadvantage than an advantage. In swimming (and other heat type sports), there is an advantage to getting just high enough, so that is what is done. It is silly to expect athletes at the highest level to not take every advantage they can to reach the highest goal.
[QUOTE=Great Antibob]
Of course there’s a difference.
The team not trying to win doesn’t care if they win. Winning or losing is not the big point to them. If they happen to win, nothing actually changes anything for them. An NFL team with a playoff berth secured running out second stringers at the end of a season has nothing to gain (or lose) by winning or losing.
The team trying to lose is trying to lose. If they happen to win, they’ve failed at their objective.
[/QUOTE]
You’ve pointed out the distinction. There is no effective difference. In both cases, as I said above, a team will only play to a level in which the advantage outweighs the disadvantage. In football, that means not caring. In badminton, or seeded tournaments, it could mean wanting to lose.
I think you missed my point about the Colts, but re-reading what I wrote I can see why. Sorry about that. I simply meant they were accused of it. As you said, they probably weren’t. But one point that was raised is that football teams playing second stringers is okay because the players that are actually playing are playing to win. So I asked if it would be okay for a football team, any team (I used the Colts, but I think that ended up just being a distraction), to get rid of a bunch of good players and put in a bunch of scrubs so they would have better chances at high draft picks. But this is a sidebar and probably not conducive to the discussion about what is and is not appropriate in sports.
Yes, they were openly trying to lose. It would have been better if this wasn’t obvious, apparently.
Funnily enough, I grew up in a house about two hundred metres from Greg Chappell’s house. Perhaps some of his style rubbed off. Although thinking about it, he got trashed for playing within the rules.
What you think about whether the players would have got an advantage is irrelevant. They thought they would get an advantage and that is all that is relevant here. And yes, you are right, I shouldn’t have said you think they should have played in a farcical and dishonest way, in order to preserve an illusion. I mis-spoke there. But you do think they should have played in a way that IMHO made that more or less inevitable. I think you are just plain kidding yourself about human nature and motivation in that respect.
Damn it’s a small world sometimes. And yes, Chappell didn’t break the rules.
My understanding of the motivation behind the Chinese and Korean pairs playing as they did was more to avoid meeting their compatriots before the final than to get an easier match necessarily. The Indonesians were proabably going along to avoid meeitng China I in the quarters though.
Usually I’m quite the misanthrope, but when the Olympics are on I like to think that there’s still some small vestige of de Coubertin’s ideals left amidst all the commercial dross and the unrelenting pressure to win at all costs.
Though you wouldn’t know it from my posts in this thread, I would like to think that too. I’ve just given up.
And what do you do when the best way to win the tournament is to lose a specific game?
This was badly designed by the rules committee, no question. There’s a pretty good writeup on the problem here; but in a nutshell, you don’t want rules that create these sorts of situations. The badminton rules do. Therefore, no one should be surprised when players do it.
Disqualifying the players is fine, but they REALLY need to fix the underlying problem, because otherwise it’s just going to turn into a game of “who can throw their matches without looking like they are throwing their matches”