All right. Cards on the table. I’m closing in on 18 years on the SDMB. I’ve paid for that privilege for most of that time (although the price is very reasonable). There is one reason, and one reason alone, for that fact: It takes out the trash. Anyone who causes trouble or spews bullshit gets a warning; anyone who persists gets banned. Mercilessly, relentlessly. And that, more than anything else, is what makes the SDMB worth it. Places like Cracked or YouTube or even GameFAQs may make some efforts to eliminating offenders, but either it’s a misguided effort (YouTube seems to be the biggest offender), or the site doesn’t go far enough, or there are simply too many discussions to properly police them all. And the subscription service made it even better, since only those who really cared enough about following the rules and being decent to others would be willing to pay.
Then guests were allowed to join. I did see troubling signs on the horizon. More intolerance, more nastiness. Annoying, but for the most part nothing disastrous.
Nothing inflammatory about that, right? Just my personal observations of a lifetime of soccer watching, and a bit of playing in my younger years. Nothing that would warrant an incredibly insulting response belittling my very right to say anything about soccer. And for a while, the responses were thoughtful, just like I’d expect.
And then Novelty Bobble weighed in on that 75% figure. Post #89.
WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?? A FLAME? A FUCKING FLAME ON THE SDMB??
Has this complete piece of shit read the stuff I’ve written about Beavis And Butthead? Or South Park? Or Dancing With The Stars? Or baseball, football, or golf? Or paranoid hurricane reports? I was a thousand times as virulent about those subjects, and I’ve never been flamed for any of it. Because that’s not supposed to happen here.
And has there been a warning? To show that this steaming pile of bullshit isn’t acceptable? No. I reported it…force of habit, I guess…but I have little faith it’s going to result in anything.
Goddammit! I never throw the first punch! I never start shit! I never troll or bait! I’m PERFECTLY willing to discuss my viewpoints with ANYONE here! I’ve backed off on dozens of discussions that I didn’t have anything close to a satisfactory answer on just because other posters were tired of hearing about it! I do my best to be considerate! Is asking the same in return too much to ask?
Okay, fine! Soccer is this perfect sport that is never boring and has no problems whatsoever and doesn’t need to change anything at all, least of all drawing a line for offsides, and I’m a big fucking ignoramus and my opinion counts for nothing and I should just never say anything about this sport again! I give up! You win! If that what it takes to prevent SHIT FROM BEING FLUNG IN MY FACE WITH ZERO REPERCUSSIONS, I’ll fucking do it!
And Novelty Bobble, and any other guests who think I’m overreacting or need to be more civil, kindly feel free to KISS MY ASS!
I see nothing over the line about what Novelty Bobble posted. Or at least, certainly nothing to warrant mod action. It doesn’t hurt that he’s not wrong. 75% fluke? That looks like a figure that’s *calculated *to piss off soccer fans, not the result of careful analysis. I only watch around 10 hours of soccer a year, and even I can tell that’s patently bullshit.
But more importantly? What the ever-living fuck does subscription status have to do with anything? You actually think that matters? Some of the rudest, and most trollish fucks on here have “Charter Member” under their name.
Plus it’s a bit rich for someone with “Guest”* under their own name* to try pulling that elitist crap.
Well that’s my first direct pitting and I guess that isn’t a bad hit-rate for nearly a decade on the board but really? That’s very weak. “incredibly insulting”? really? and you’ve been here how long?
The irony is not lost on me that you seem to be suggesting that fans of football are somehow over-sensitive and over-reacting to criticism, whilst your response to a very mild rebuke regarding a stat you pulled out of your arse appears to be a formal reporting and a pitting. I’ve never reported anyone, never felt the need. I reckon we can all take a little rough and tumble.
Anyway, the fact remains that you made up a nonsense “statistic”, with what intent I have no idea but you rightly got called out on it. And believe me, what you said was complete nonsense.
Either that stat was intended to be sarcastic or hyperbole, in which case it can be ignored, or you truly meant it, in which case it is a clearly a poorly researched opinion based on what can only be a questionable reading of the game and can also safely be disregarded.
I note you’ve not used any additional data to back it up. Do you have any?
I stand by what I said and wouldn’t take a word of it back unless shown that I was wrong. Nor would I choose to express it in any other way. If you are perceiving the game in such way as to honestly come away with that opinion then yes, what you said regarding flukes should be ignored.
And just be careful how you structure things. I very carefully **ONLY **responded to your 75% fluke claim. The way you’ve set it out above makes it seem like I was applying my comments to the whole of your post. I was not. I did not show your whole post on purpose because I thought only one section of it was outright nonsense.
Had I posted in a Hockey or Basketball thread that 75% of all scores were flukes, or that 75% of all US supreme court decision were reached by a secret spinning wheel of chance I would consider it a sign of the coming apocalypse if I *didn’t *get my arse handed to me on a plate and served notice that my opinions on the subject were suspect.
If this is all it takes to be pitted then consider me underwhelmed. I’m not angry, I’m just very disappointed with all concerned.
I watch a lot of soccer (much of it with the Euro-hooligans I play with). But every four years, I end up watching it at pubs filled with Americans.
And I’m embarrassed by how random it is. I could give you multiple examples from this World Cup: one team outplays the other, dominating with precision passing and over twenty shots on goal. But the other sloppier team gets one lucky break (perhaps even off a defender), and that’s the game.
Every four years I watch thinking “Okay, now we have a generation of Americans in their 20s and 30s that grew up playing soccer as kids. Why won’t it take off as a professional sport here?” The speed of the game is a factor, and the fact that goals are so few that one scored by the weaker team can mean victory.
I don’t hate soccer, but it’s hard to take seriously when it solves elimination games with those ridiculous shoot-outs. What a sorry-ass spectacle. The entire thing comes down to the goalie guessing correctly (or not.)
Yeah, I proposed settling the final score with a set of ping pong played by the team captains, making the point that a shootout has as little to do with soccer as table tennis does.
But, again, the game is so low scoring that if they say “Okay, Sudden Death til one team scores!” they’d have to play in a stadium with lights. Because the Lingering Death round could be six hours.
kids have been playing soccer longer than that. I’m in my 40s and I clearly remember lots of kids my age playing it. But that’s where it ends for a lot of 'em, 'cos it’s still thought of as a “kids game” in plenty of circles.
at any rate it is kind of “taking off” in that leagues like MLS are growing. But that’s not good enough for some people; they insist that it should take over from baseball, football, and basketball as one of the most popular sports. You know the type of person, a fucking asshole snob who automatically thinks anything done differently in another country is “better” and won’t shut the fuck up about how awesome he is because he desperately puts on faux-European airs.
it’s not gonna happen any time soon, despite Deadspin and ESPN’s best efforts to force everyone to care about it. Deadspin is just a bunch of those faux-European snobs, and ESPN has a ton of its own issues.
The “a least 75% of the goals I’ve seen were flat-out flukes” statement was dumb. For one thing “flat-out fluke” is not a well defined sports term, so if called on it you could always tweak your definition so it works. I expect you initially didn’t indeed for it to include a well placed free kick from just outside the box, but a relatively low percentage of free kicks from just outside the box lead to goals, so it could be argued that those who do are “flukes”.
I expect you were more thinking of deflections off a defender, lucky bounces, corner kicks into the throng in front of goal, and it is entirely possible that makes up 75% or more of goals, but so what? Getting the corner or getting to the point where you can make a shot at goal is part of what sets a good team apart from a weak one. Sure, the low number of attempts and the high element of randomness compared to, for instance basketball, makes for higher odds of “surprise” upsets in elimination tournaments, but to football fans that is part of the excitement.
But if that was the intended meaning, the number is still meaningless unless you take into consideration other stats, such a “shots on goal” and “corner kicks”. In league play previous performance predicts final rank very well, which would not be the case if the game was just random.
And yet you clicked on the title, knowing what you’d get, and read enough to have an opinion. (Or read nothing because just the title made you decide it was a good opportunity to troll.)
