Or so the conventional wisdom (as promulgated by sports columnists/analysts) goes.
It seems that it is no longer sufficient in (for example) golf or tennis to have a few players dominant and competing with each other in big tournaments on a regular basis - now it is demanded that there be one overwhelmingly successful star in any such sport at a time, a la Tiger Woods (the old Tiger).
Thus we have reached the (in my opinion) crazy state of affairs where an unknown wins the PGA and instantly some idiot is demanding to know whether he’ll be golf’s next superstar (Rory McIlroy is so, you know, last week).
There’s a poll in today’s USA Today sports section in which a little over half the respondents said they liked seeing newcomers win in golf, and close to a quarter said it was only about Tiger Woods for them.
So what’s the Doper take on this? Are golf and tennis as spectator sports ruined for you if there’s no single superstar threatening to win every big event? Or is this line of thinking a product of sheer laziness by sportswriters and commentators who don’t want to bother researching new story lines?*
Apparently not what you want to hear, but I prefer superstars even in team sports. When the NFL season starts, I don’t care about the standings, I’ll just watch the games that Manning and Bradley and Vick play.
And I absolutely can’t wait for Tiger to solve whatever is ailing him, and get back to dominating golf.
Sometimes, you have to realize that people don’t always tell pollsters the truth.
Of, it’s not that people are consciously LYING, it’s just that what they THINK they want to see and what they actually want to see are often two different things.
There are millions of people who’ll tell pollsters that there’s entirely too much vulgar trash on television and that they WANT to see classier, artsier programming. But the ratings suggest people DO, in fact, like trash.
Similarly, millions of sports fans will tell pollsters that they love Cinderella stories and underdogs. But the Nielsen ratings suggest that’s not true. People may SAY they love seeing George Mason in the Final 4 or a pair of unknowns battling for the PGA title, but the ratings are invariably higher when you have Duke in the NCAA finals, and Tiger Woods in contention.
Or… PERHAPS people do like to see a “David” win, but only if he’s up against a Goliath.
There used to be a cartoonist for the Des Moines Register who every October without fail would comment on whether the N.Y. Yankees had made the World Series (which made it an Official World Series in his view), and if not he’d draw a player sliding into home and being called out, signifying that it wasn’t a real World Series. :rolleyes:
Plus, Borg’s ability to assimilate any and all strategies used by McEnroe made matches a lot more fun to watch. Luckily for humans, the Borg were thrown off by McEnroe’s random tirades and human emotions
You can have too much parity. The way golf feels right now is that you have a bunch of players who are all more or less evenly matched. Every week, it’s a different set of players vying for the win, the best players around win maybe 2 tournaments and have 5-6 top 10 finishes.
I appreciate the idea of getting new blood and new storylines, but it’s hard to take a new young player seriously when you’re not going to hear their name again for another year, the next time they sniff the top of the leaderboard.
I looked up the winners of the last 13 Majors (12 players), the ones since Tiger’s last win. All 12 played in the PGA Championship, 7 missed the cut. The remaining 5 didn’t manage to break the top 10. Bleh.
You at least need a small crowd of standout players, who have separated themselves from the pack. That way, when someone from the pack steps up and wins, he’s beaten the best players of his time, not just other random players from the pack.
A Wimbledon final of unheralded amateur Joe Schmeaux vs. Rafael Nadal would probably make for big drama and high ratings. But a final with unheralded amateur Joe Schmeaux and equally unheralded amateur Johnny Nobody would draw no viewers.
A Sunday afternoon showdown at the U.S. Open between Tiger Woods and unheralded Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy would make for great drama and great ratings. But if TIger misses the cut, NOBODY will tune in to watch McAvoy compete with another no-name for the title on SUnday afternoon.
An NCAA final between Duke and tiny Cadwallader College (anybody get that arcane reference?) would make for drama and big ratings (with millions cheering for AND against Duke). But a final of Cadwallader vs. Webber State wouldn’t get any viewers.
Cinderella stories are great, but not in a vacuum. The Cinderellas NEED a superstar or superteam to play against, or nobody’s going to watch.
You don’t need superstars and Goliaths all the time, but over the long term, you do need some recognizable names and faces to attract a non-hardcore fan audience. ESPN is obviously desperate for someone to become the next superstar in golf, and it’s getting annoying to me even as a non-golf fan because you can see how hard they’re trying to foist these new guys on their audience. Their job is covering sports, not creating superstars to put in their own commercials.
I’m sure this year’s final (Nadal vs. Djokovic, who’s having an amazing year) did better than the previous final, where Nadal beat Tomas Berdych - not a big name internationally. Joe Schmeaux isn’t necessarily good news for ratings. Not compared to Federer and Nadal, anyway.
Oh, I agree- Nadalvs. Federer is almost always going to be a better draw than anything else, just as (almost) everyone wants to see, say, Tiger vs. Phil head to head on the 18th hole at Augusta.
People regularly SAY they like underdogs and Cinderellas, but the ratings suggest people don’t actually watch what they SAY they want to see.
But what I AM saying is, even if there’s a feel-good story about an athlete or team that came out of nowhere to reach the finals, that Cinderella needs a superstar or superteam to square off against. A decade ago, MANY viewers were intrigued by Rich Beem going toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods and coming out on top. But if Tiger hadn’t been there, NOBODY would have cared about Rich Beem per se.
Indeed, I think the NFL is one of the VERY few exceptions to this rule. If, by some miracle, the Tampa Bay Bucs were to face the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl, I firmly believe the ratings would be just fine, even though neither team plays in a big market and neither team has any big name stars.
In any other sport, viewers would quickly tune out if there were no name stars or big name teams in the finals.
I think there are 2 competing arguments that you may not notice you’re making: sports itself and ratings
I don’t believe any sport needs a dominant team or person. The sport is just that, a sport, a game with defined rules and regulations. It cares not whether you have a team win 100% of the time or a different winner each time. If anyways says it “hurts” the sport then they are simply misunderstanding what sport is.
Golf is not hurt by having 13 different winners in the last 13 majors. Golf cares not for what puny humans do with it, golf is just golf.
What people seem to be confusing sport with is ratings, or interest. Yes, there will be more interest with established stars and familiar storylines. But please, lets not confuse interest in a sport with the sport itself!
For me personally, I dislike golf, car racing, football, and a lot of other sports. To me, things are not ruined if you have parity. For the sports I do follow, I enjoy watching established teams and players because they matter more in context of the sports’ historical interest. But I wouldn’t say that it hurts or helps the sport at all, that’s just the interest aspect, which is completely different
A golfer like Tiger has as many people hoping he fails as those who want him to win. No matter. It calls attention to the sport and helps ratings. It also increases discussion. Tiger is very important to golf.
Farve garners a lot of chat because the bastard will not go away. He has been retiring since football was conceived of. Yet there he is .Still talking about playing again.
I think having stars or prominent teams is just fine - what I object to is the notion that non-team sports absolutely need to have one incredibly dominant superstar or else fans won’t pay attention.
Yep, that’s pretty much it. The obsessive network/commentator focus on The Next Tiger gets annoying. Was golf so incredibly dull and unwatchable when Nicklaus was competing against Trevino and Watson (or whoever else was big at the time)?*
Well alright, yes it was dull, but no duller than it was when Tiger bestrode the fairway like a colossus.
*at least I don’t remember submorons yelling “Get in the hole!” as soon as a golfer teed off.
That happened WAY before Tiger came along. John Daly’s army started all the yelling with “You da man!” and “Get in the hole!” followed soon after. Daly came along and won the PGA in 1991, when Tiger was 16 years old. Tiger joined the tour in 1996.
I said I wasn’t paying much attention to golf during that period, but after looking it up, I see very little reason for a “correction,” and no reason whatever for so much snark. Have a nice day.
It really was not intended to be a snark - and I thought my post was jocular enough to indicate that. My “correction” was to introduce an even more bland personality than Nick Price, thereby supporting your point. Hence my “you win” comment.
Mind you, Faldo is much more interesting as a commentator.