Just to fulfill my curiosity, is there any structural analysis on sports out there?
To give some examples, in soccer, the two team formations are symmetrical (11 players each) and the playing tactics, dependent on possession, determine the roles. Whereas, in baseball, the two formations are different i.e. fielders and pitcher from one team, and batters from the other. Has anyone developed terminology for this aspect? For another example, take scoring: in a game like table tennis, whoever reaches a preset number of points wins the game, whereas in football, the one with the higher score after a preset amount of play (measured in time or innings…etc) wins. Then there’s scoring algebra: after reaching deuce in tennis, one’s score can drop after losing a point if on Advantage, whereas one can only go forward or remain the same in football.
Basically, I’m asking whether these sort of things are analysed and categorized. If so, what might the field be called?
Well, i’m not sure that there’s a specific term for the sort of thing you’re talking about, but if you read good sports writers, you’ll see that these sorts of systematic and procedural issues are commonly addressed, albeit usually for one sport at a time, rather than in a comparative manner.
For example, in baseball (a sport that produces an unusually large amount of insightful, high quality writing), the nature of the game itself and its structural and procedural constraints and limitations, are the topic of constant analysis. Writers like Roger Angell, Stephen Jay Gould (yes, the famous scientist), George Will (yes, the famous political commentator) and a whole bunch of others spend considerable time dealing with the structure of the game and how it affects the way the game is played.
One book that doesn’t quite live up to its promise, but that does provide some interesting observations about important differences between two sports, is Ed Smith’s book Playing Hard Ball: County Cricket and Big League Baseball. Smith is a professional cricket player from England, and he spent time with the New York Mets in order to examine the difference between the sports. He has some good stuff about the different pressures on the bowler/pitcher and the batsman/batter in the two sports, based on the different methods of scoring and the difficulty of getting outs. As i said, it’s not quite the book i hoped it would be, but it does have some interesting sections.
Anyway, that might not have answered your question properly, but it’s a start. There are plenty of sports fans on these boards, and i’m sure someone can make a better contribution.
There is an academic research discipline called Game Theory, which does classify games in categories such as ‘symmetric vs asymmetric’. Most people who study this, though, are really interested in mathematically analyzing choices in games, so they tend to analyze and talk about purely intellectual games, rather than athletic sports.
Not really on topic, but nearby, and damn interesting IMO. I give you:
The Journal of the Philosophy of Sport.
-FrL-